I learned to never underestimate Bloomberg in the ‘90s on Wall Street when everybody said open that data feeds would beat a closed terminal like Bloomberg – all were wrong.
Then we had a lot of hype about Symphony messaging as a Bloomberg killer. It made sense. Messaging among traders was what kept traders hooked to their expensive Bloomberg habit even when the data part was simple to replicate. Symphony was created, backed and used by Goldman Sachs.
Still the Bloomberg terminal is very much alive and well.
So why am I excited by a bit of open source on Github called Gamestonk Terminal shown to Hacker News by a lone programmer? Five reasons:
- The mighty Microsoft dominance was humbled by a lone programmer called Linus Torvalds (Linux).
- It looks functionally good enough.
- It got to the number one spot on Hacker News, meaning there is plenty of developer interest.
- Populist rage. This post is an unplanned Part 5 in this 4-parter on Wall Street Bets vs Hedge Funds.
- Somebody will combine this with Symphony and release it as a SaaS service for say $20 pm = 99% less than Bloomberg and get millions of paid users and go public in an IPO led by Goldman Sachs. If anybody is working on this, reach out to me as I am motivated to get involved.
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