Written by Finance Intern, Matthew Quinlan

This week, the other 7 interns and I took a short walk over from the Cantor Fitzgerald Ireland office at St. Stephen’s Green to Bloomberg, arriving right on time at 9:15 AM. After checking in, we helped ourselves to a quick breakfast from their breakfast buffet. This was definitely one of the better ways to start a financial markets session.

We were welcomed by Lucy Downes, an account manager at Bloomberg, along with David Harper, a rates specialist with a background as a former rates trader at Deutsche Bank and HSBC in London.

Lucy began with an introduction to navigating the Bloomberg Terminal. She showed us how to access news and research using tools such as NSUB (for curated news feeds) and TREN (for trending headlines and stock activity).

From there, we explored historical economic data, including nonfarm payrolls going back as far as Bloomberg’s archives allow.

Next, we turned our attention to equities. Lucy demonstrated how to retrieve analyst recommendations with the ANR function, examine earnings estimates via EE, review dividend analysis using DVD, and track upcoming events with EVTS.

Shifting to the macroeconomic picture, we learned to work with functions like ECFC (economic forecasts), ECO (upcoming data releases), and ECAN, which enables users to build and visualise economic models directly within the Terminal.

After a short break, we returned to hear from David. He provided an overview of credit markets before walking us through analysis of fixed income securities and interest rate products.

We covered topics including rates, swaps, treasuries, and predictive indicators of credit events, such as inverted yield curves and spikes in short-term swaps. David also demonstrated essential Bloomberg functions in this area, GRM (Global Rates Monitor), FIW (Fixed Income Worksheet) and SRCH (for locating securities with specific credit criteria). To round out the discussion, he explained how to analyse market expectations for policy rates using WIRP.

To wrap things up, Lucy and David shared insights into Bloomberg’s integration with Python and BQuant, highlighting how these tools can enhance modelling and analytics.

Before returning to the office, we grabbed a final bite from the buffet and thanked Lucy and David for such a valuable and engaging session.

What a great day it was, packed with learning, insights, and hands-on exposure to one of the most powerful tools in finance. A sincere thank you to everyone at Bloomberg for the warm welcome and a fantastic experience.