Bloomberg Certification

Interested in earning your certification in Bloomberg? Here's how! What is Bloomberg? Bloomberg L.P., founded in 1981 by Michael Bloomberg, is the world's leading financial information provider, news and media company, serving customers around the globe. The company employs over 8000 people in offices around the world, including 9 sales offices, 2 data centers and 87 news bureaus. Bloomberg leverages its data and news resources through related media products, including television and radio programming, web sites, books and publications to meet the financial information needs of professionals and consumers globally. About the certification program In both good and bad times for the market, Bloomberg has proven vital to financial professionals who wish to keep on top of their market sector. The Bloomberg certification series trains professionals on how to use the system. The increasing complexity of the system as well as industry's reliance upon it has shown that a proficiency benchmark in the use of Bloomberg is highly desirable. To meet such a need, Bloomberg has developed the Product Certification Program that offers structured training in fixed income, equity, and foreign exchange. Description of Program Courses are taken online and following each lesson, the student may request an exam. All courses have a four-digit code associated with them where the first character of the code is the letter that denotes the track you are following. For example, E (Equity), F (Fixed Income), and X (Foreign Exchange). Each track has three levels of study. For instance, the first level of Equities appears as E101, E102... the second level of Equities appears as E201, E202... and the third level appears as E301, E302... Benefits One of the primary benefits is that participants will dramatically increase their knowledge of financial markets and of Bloomberg functionality. In addition, certified users will gain recognition for attaining a high level of competency in using the Bloomberg service. Recognition by Bloomberg Once you have earned a certificate, this information will be added to your profile in the Bloomberg system (subject to your agreement). This information will be classified under the heading of "Education." Bloomberg will also issue you a physical certificate recognizing your achievement. How do I get started? Go to the Trading Floor in the Spears School of Business and use the Bloomberg terminal (ask the lab monitor if you do not know where the terminal is). You need to create your own personal log-in. To create your log-in, please hit (DFLT)(GO)and follow the prompts to create the login. In addition, you will need to provide a number you can be reached at - like a cell phone. If you do not have a cell phone, you can use the trading floor phone number (405-744-2518). Bloomberg will call you back to validate the login within a few minutes. In addition, once you have created the login, you need to type CERT (GO), 2 (GO) for the Electronic Application and fill out the information. Once you have added all of the information, hit (GO) 1 (GO) to send. You can see what seminars are available by typing NI BUSEMR and hit (GO). No matter which track you decide to take, everyone needs to take the Introduction seminars which are labeled I001, I002, I003, I004, and I005. The introduction seminars are also available below from a seminar completed on campus in 2004. http://ra.okstate.edu:8080/ramgen/williams/bloomberg/bloomberg1.rm http://ra.okstate.edu:8080/ramgen/williams/bloomberg/bloomberg2.rm http://ra.okstate.edu:8080/ramgen/williams/bloomberg/bloomberg3.rm Users will need RealPlayer to view the video files above. Timetable The program is progressive and levels should be taken in order. Courses should be completed within six months of starting the program. Are there any costs involved? No. The courses are free. The courses are not for credit at OSU. What is the duration of each session? Each session lasts about one hour. How are courses assessed? Each course is followed by an online, multiple-choice exam for which the pass mark is 70%. You will receive your grade immediately upon completing the exam. What happens if you fail an exam? Should you not achieve the 70% pass mark, you may apply to retake the exam. More Information You may learn more about the certification by logging into the Bloomberg terminal in the Trading Floor. Type CERT and hit (GO). Detailed course structures are described in the following pages. To view the timetable of courses being offered, you can go to BU (GO). Finally, if you have further questions, press the green HELP button twice on the Bloomberg terminal and submit your question.