The weekend started early for many traders around the globe. The reason - an outage of the most popular data information tool for professionals engaged in the financial markets. The Bloomberg Terminal service was suspended shortly after the start of the London trading session around 08.20 a.m. local time.
For many professional traders, the day was wasted as they are used to constant access to their Bloomberg Terminals. The service is used by thousands of bond, stock, commodities and foreign-Exchange traders for a variety of purposes – from communicating to sending orders to the market.
todays events show that the market is over-reliant on certain software
The outage today has substantially disrupted a set of markets on a fairly volatile day particularly for the global stock markets.
Speaking to Finance Magnates, the CEO of Money.Net, Morgan Downey, said, “Todays events show that the market is over-reliant on certain software. Getting such software to trading floors is very difficult and the barrier of entry to the field is very high because of the substantial initial costs.”
“Because there’s been so little competition on trading floors, they have become very risky places. People are highly dependent on one piece of software which at the same time costs up to $25,000 a year,” he explained.
The company is providing to the market a low-cost terminal experience alternative to Bloomberg or Reuters.
A number of industry sources disclosed to Finance Magnates that institutional FX trading volumes suffered a substantial decline when compared to Thursday. Despite a fairly volatile market due to increasing worries about a Greek default, the day’s trading volumes were close to 30% lower than on the previous trading day.
institutional FX trading volumes suffered a substantial decline when compared to Thursday
Retail Trading volumes were not affected materially, as there is rarely an individual trader willing to spend what sources claim to be $24,000 per year on Bloomberg L.P.’s product.
The day was not short on market moving news. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the latest consumer price inflation figures, causing a big dollar rally which unfolded throughout the European afternoon as the rate ticked higher than the market expected to 1.8 percent year-on-year.
Bloomberg L.P. began restoring services to clients around noon London time. By about 3 PM, services were fully restored and operational. Bloomberg L.P. issued an official apology to all those affected thorough its social media profile on Twitter.
On the bright side, a number of traders were staring out of their windows rather than their screens for most of the London trading session…
