Bloomberg: Finance Market News

Review by eFreeware

Bloomberg's Android app is one of the few finance downloads that tries to cover the whole day rather than one slice of it: breaking business news, live market data, streaming television and radio, podcasts, and a watchlist for tracking investments all sit in the same place. Stories come from a network the developer describes as more than 120 newsrooms around the world, which is the real selling point here. Plenty of apps will give you a stock quote or a headline; far fewer can hand you both alongside a live radio stream and a downloadable magazine issue.

That breadth sets expectations about who will get value from it. If you follow markets as part of your work, manage a portfolio you want to keep an eye on, or simply read business and economics coverage seriously, the mix of news, data and audio is likely to fit how you already spend your time. A casual reader who checks a headline once a week may find the app heavier than the job requires.

The download is free, and the app carries advertising and offers in-app purchases. A subscription, per the developer, opens up all Bloomberg content both inside the app and on the website once an account is linked. With more than 10 million installs and a 4.0 average across nearly 80,000 ratings, it is clearly a mainstream choice rather than a niche tool.

Reading the news without drowning in it

The news side is organized around featured and trending stories, with coverage split across business, markets, industries, technology, politics, foreign affairs, personal finance and opinion. That is a wide net, and the section structure matters more than it might sound: it lets you start with the areas you care about instead of scrolling a single undifferentiated feed. Trending topics the developer highlights include the US economy, oil prices, the Dow Jones and the NASDAQ, so the app is built to surface whatever is moving that day.

Push notifications are the other half of this. The developer says alerts cover major business headlines and financial briefings. For anyone whose working day is punctuated by market moves, that is the feature that keeps the app relevant between deliberate reading sessions. It also means the app can be as quiet or as present as you want it to be, depending on how you set it up.

The obvious tension is that a news product with this much output can overwhelm. Sections and alerts are the tools the app gives you to manage that, and how well they work for you will depend on how disciplined you are about which ones you enable.

Market data and a watchlist you build yourself

The market data layer is aimed at fundamental analysis: stock prices, equity indexes, futures, bonds, commodities and foreign currencies. This is reference material rather than a trading terminal, and it is best understood that way. If you want to check where an index closed or how a currency is moving before reading analysis about it, the data sits alongside the coverage rather than in a separate app.

The Watchlist is the piece that turns that into something personal. You add stocks, mutual funds, ETFs or currencies and follow their performance, and the app surfaces news related to those holdings. That combination is the most useful thing here for a private investor: a portfolio view that comes with the reporting explaining why a position moved.

What appeals to me is that the watchlist and the news are not siloed. A reader who tracks a handful of funds gets both the numbers and the context in one place, which is a more coherent experience than juggling a quotes app and a news app side by side.

Live television, radio and listening on the road

Bloomberg TV and Bloomberg Radio both stream live inside the app, and there is a catalog of podcasts alongside them. The developer pitches these as insights from prominent names in global finance, business, economics and investing, which is the usual framing for a media brand's audio offering. For anyone who would rather listen to markets coverage than read it, this is a substantial part of the app's value.

Android Auto support extends that to the car: radio, podcasts and audio articles are available while driving. That is a genuinely practical addition for people whose commute or working day involves a lot of time behind the wheel, and it is the kind of feature that quietly decides whether an app stays installed.

One more piece worth flagging is offline reading. You can download the latest issue of Businessweek and read it without a connection, which makes the app usable on a flight or anywhere else you would rather not rely on mobile data.

What you need before you start

Getting going is a matter of downloading the app and customizing it around the markets and topics you want to follow. You set up the app to follow the markets and your holdings, and you pick which alerts you get. The setup is refreshingly simple for a product this broad.

The subscription is the main thing to understand before committing. With a subscription and a linked account, everything Bloomberg publishes in the app and on the site is open to you. Payment is charged to your Google Play account when you confirm the purchase, and the subscription renews automatically unless auto-renew is switched off at least 24 hours before the current period ends. Renewal is charged within 24 hours of the period ending, and you manage or cancel from your account settings after purchase. Buying a subscription cancels any remaining free trial time.

The app is rated for Everyone 10+ and updated regularly; the most recent release note mentions performance improvements and enhancements.

The reader this app is built for

This fits people who treat financial news as part of their working life rather than a hobby. Analysts, investors, founders and anyone in a role where the state of the markets affects decisions will find the combination of reporting, data, live audio and a personal watchlist hard to replicate in a single download. The breadth is the point, and it rewards readers who will actually use several parts of it.

It also suits the listener more than the browser. If your habit is to have business radio or a markets podcast running while you work or drive, the Android Auto support and live streams make the app a natural fit. Someone who wants a quick headline check and nothing else is paying, in attention, for a lot of capability they will not touch.

The one caution is the subscription. Unlimited access across app and website is a meaningful commitment, and the automatic renewal terms are worth reading before you confirm. If you already pay for Bloomberg access elsewhere, linking your account is the sensible route rather than starting a second one.

A broad finance app that earns its space

Bloomberg's Android app does something few competitors attempt: it holds news, market data, a portfolio watchlist, live television and radio, podcasts and offline magazine reading in one place, backed by a large global reporting network. The free download with ads and in-app purchases gives you a way in, and the subscription opens up all Bloomberg content across app and website.

If you only need the occasional headline, the app's scale may be more than you need.

The app has been on Google Play since March 2014 and is still being updated, which speaks to how seriously the developer treats it. For a finance reader who wants one app rather than four, that track record is reassuring.

What's new

This release includes performance improvements and enhancements. Enjoying the Bloomberg app? We'd love to hear more about it! Please consider leaving us a rating or review.