Hola, partners.
Here’s looking at you, kid, on the other side of spring break. The weather’s been as surreal as it has been to be back in class. Eight weeks down, seven to go. Just hang in there, people.
On Thursday, two Post employees and I sat down with Nick Baker, who graduated from Ohio University in 2000 and is a former Post staffer. He is now a team leader at Bloomberg News and he led the three of us through the basics of the Bloomberg Terminal.
For those unaware, the Bloomberg Terminal is the cornerstone of Bloomberg itself. It is a specialized computer that acts as a portal to Bloomberg’s seemingly immeasurable amount of information about anything that might be tied to the financial markets. I mean anything.
It has information about the price of stocks, bonds, commodities (like copper or oil), foreign currencies and everything in between — prices ranging from decades ago to right up to the second. Its news service works to provide comprehensive information about anything that might affect the price of anything else within minutes. Knowledge is power (especially in the financial sector), and Bloomberg attempts to put as much of both at your fingertips as possible.
There are so many shortcuts and specific commands that we were only able to scratch the surface of the terminal’s potential. Toward the end of the hour we had scheduled, I asked what we might be able to find about Ohio University on the terminal. We soon found some basic information and records detailing all the bonds the university had issued dating back 10 years or so.
There were financial documents and bond maturity dates and copies of audits and credit ratings and plenty of other information. As someone who knows a couple things about the university, it was daunting.
But that’s the thing. Ohio University is a massive, living thing that has more nooks and crannies than a geriatric backside. It’s nigh impossible to keep tabs on all of it.
Even following the proceedings of a Board of Trustees meeting without making a puzzled face is a feat. But Post reporters spend hours preparing for the hours they spend in the sessions themselves to understand the meaning and significance of what exactly is happening.
So, yeah, like the financial world, there’s a ton of information about Ohio University out there. But that doesn’t mean you should tune it out. Just as the actions of the Federal Reserve have a huge impact on trading at the New York Stock Exchange, so too do the decisions of the Board of Trustees have ramifications for the university.
But just because you don’t know what the yield on a 10-year Treasury note means or don’t know exactly how the State Share of Instruction works doesn’t mean it doesn’t impact you. Lemme tell ya, it does.
Ryan Clark is a senior studying journalism and the editor-in-chief of The Post. Have any good stock tips? Email him at rc348710@ohiou.edu.
