If you are using or are planning to use the Bloomberg terminal to download data, this BQL seminar will be very useful in making sure you do this efficiently.

BQL is an API (Excel add-in) based on normalized, curated, point-in-time data.

Using BQL, you can perform custom calculations directly in the Bloomberg Cloud. Analyses that previously required you to download thousands of data points and perform complicated Microsoft Excel manipulation now require only one formula. You just specify the data you want and the calculation you want to perform, including, but not limited to, arithmetic and statistical operations, filtering, grouping, scoring, and dates-based analysis-so you can synthesize large amounts of data and extract the exact information you need.

Among the other benefits, using BQL could reduce data consumption, hence the likelihood of reaching Bloomberg Excel limits. It can be problematic to download large amount of data in bulk when all you really need is the result of a calculation, such as the average price per sector of the FTSE 100 over the last 50 days. (In this example, you would have to download for all 101 securities the price for each day and sector code, that adds up to 5,151 data points when you only need one per sector). You might exceed daily or monthly download limits, meaning that Bloomberg cannot be used in Excel for that PC until the first day of the next calendar month. The download limits affect all users on that PC.

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