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TraderJoe
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Joined: February 1st, 2005, 11:21 pm

Thomsons and Reuters Merge

May 18th, 2007, 11:25 pm

Watch out, Bloomberg. Thomson's acquisition of Reuters adds a new behemoth to the news-and-numbers world .QuoteGlocer also says that Reuters' and Thomson's financial information services will fill each others' holes. For instance, he says, Reuters is relatively weak in fixed income, a Thomson strength, while Reuters is the major player in foreign exchange. "Now you will be able to go from spot foreign exchange prices all the way to the long bond," Glocer says. "This allows us to get organically where we want to go much faster." He also notes that Thomson's current mainstays—supplying information to the legal, accounting, health-care, and scientific communities—would help offset the cyclicality of Reuters' financial-institution customers.
 
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AlphaNumericus
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Joined: December 25th, 2004, 9:17 pm

Thomsons and Reuters Merge

May 18th, 2007, 11:58 pm

This "news" is weeks old.
 
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csa
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Joined: February 21st, 2003, 3:16 am

Thomsons and Reuters Merge

May 19th, 2007, 3:21 am

Given that Thomson makes historical data harder to get, this will only make it harder for people to get data. They have so many products and stuff that needs custom data pulls, it makes the whole process extremely inefficient. Bloomberg does have numbers but which numbers can you really trust. I've had numerous experiences with Bloomberg where they actually give the wrong numbers. The help desk is of no use for anything more than elementary questions. I don't like Thomson nor Bloomberg, but there's no other alternative so they can get away with these inefficiencies.
 
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TraderJoe
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Joined: February 1st, 2005, 11:21 pm

Thomsons and Reuters Merge

May 20th, 2007, 10:31 pm

I see a window of opportunity ...
 
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purbani
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Joined: July 14th, 2002, 3:00 am

Thomsons and Reuters Merge

May 20th, 2007, 11:06 pm

It would be quite nice if there was some competition that forced Bloomberg to adopt 20th century technology at least and switch from the dreadfully unfriendly DOS style to something a bit more user friendly like Rueters 2000. Reuters lost out by trying to supply both News and Data before the bandwidth was there but has a far better interface overall. Bloomberg charting package is so terrible you can't even put more than a couple of lines on a graph.It can take you 20 minutes to find something on Bloomberg as opposed to two on Reuters.
 
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DominicConnor
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Joined: July 14th, 2002, 3:00 am

Thomsons and Reuters Merge

May 21st, 2007, 2:22 pm

I believe that BB actively tried to make data hard to get. It values the "relationship" it has with traders, and in my experience their reps do not ever want to speak to anyone who's not a trader.They don't return calls from anyone doing development for that platform, as far as I can tell that is policy.My "favourite" was taking a junior trader along to some meeting with BB.BBrep actually wouldn't look at me, even though I was doing all the talking, and kept firing questions of a nature that someone at junior trader level could not possibly answer.As inBBer : Are you going to be doing X ?Trader: Don't know, ask DominicBBer: We think that X is importantTrader: Not sure what X is, that's Dominic's areaBBer: Doing X this way is really important because of Y.Trader: (annoyed that he is having shit he doesn't understand fired at him, whilst I'm sitting next to him) "Dominic runs this"BBer: You see X is aAt this point I but in, and ask him which bit of "Head of IT" he'd failed to grasp in my job title.BBer didn't bat an eyelid, and still kept addressing the trader.That was funny in it's own way, but not an isolated incident.Fact is that this process works for BB. They've decided that relationships with traders are all that matters.They hate quant developers. By comparison my firm was going head to head with Cantor Fitzgerald and costing them non-trivial money.These competitors were more polite to me than BB who we paid 1K per month per screen.CF actually served me nice tea served by pretty ladies and bought me beer.
Last edited by DominicConnor on May 20th, 2007, 10:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
 
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pb273
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Joined: July 14th, 2002, 3:00 am

Thomsons and Reuters Merge

May 23rd, 2007, 5:07 pm

i am worried about what will happen to worldscope versus multex and which one will stop ...