Oh, my lovely Bloomberg, will we ever be the same again? Bloomberg withdrawal (BBG wɪðˈdrɔːəl) noun. Definition: Removal of all meaningful work space elements other than the desk, chair, phone, and headache tablets. Detachment from all those who matter in one's work (and possibly also personal) life. Feeling of uncertainty that accompanies the suspicion that their terminal is somehow betraying them. Typically arises from reports in the media. Unfortunately, an unusually high number of people may be suffering from the last one lately. Sorry about that. In case you haven't been following, there are two very separate threads to the Bloomberg kerfuffle. The first was eloquently reported on by Tracy Alloway on FT Alphaville, following on from a story in the New York Post that Bloomberg reporters could access a limited subset of data about users. The second thread, in short, relates to a long-undetected snafu by a former Bloomberg employee whereby a dataset of messages were inadvertently made publicly available online, when said person was still employed at the financial behemoth. Both threads are obviously embarrassing to Bloomberg, but boy are they different. Also both failings have since been rectified by the company. As Daniel Schäfer and Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson reported on the more recent story about the publicly available file, the available messages in said file were between banks and their clients, blind-copied to special Bloomberg email addresses because they formed part of a data project. The file was, of course, never meant to be available via Google - or any other - search. And it would have been fairly well hidden if the hapless chap whodunnit had included a small text file telling searchbots to not index the page. Or he could have just for reals put it on a secured site like he probably meant to do. We imagine Bloomberg is currently in the process of reviewing their list of people who would even be able to pull that quantity of data off their system. Anyway, the messages would have become stale, useless, and boring to all but academics and reporters within hours - or at most a day - for the most part. Sure, there could have been some tasty pricing info in there of more illiquid products, for example, but such messages are so large in quantity that they form an unmanageably large dataset... unless, that is, one has a parsing engine, which is exactly what the the file had been pulled for. That is, it was part of a Bloomberg Message Mining project. Here's the description of what a Message Mining Analyst would do at Bloomberg, as per a recent job advertisement: MSG Mining is a service that is aimed at providing credible, transparent and high quality pricing that is based on Instant Messaging and Email traffic received by clients. The data received is digitized and acts as a pricing source for transparency on OTC instruments for use in analytical functions. Team members are responsible for ensuring that price information across Bonds, CDS, Loans and Mortgage products are properly picked up from individual messages and returned back to the client. This process includes understanding how traders/sales people discuss prices via email for the supported products. Analysts on the data team are also responsible for providing real-time support for our clients through Bloomberg's Instant Messaging platform. Additionally the team works very closely with our Business team on providing guidance for the future direction of the product, and works with our R&D staff to test code changes. Bloomberg isn't the only one in the messaging parsing business. Markit and CMA are too. Here's how the output looks with Markit's service for loans pricing: And here's how CMA helpfully describes their parsing product: Now, if you've ever seen the messages that traders write containing these quotes, you'll know how incredibly variable they are in format, grammar, and formality. The engines that parse them are lean, mean, reading machines, and they get smarter and smarter over time. In fact, the ex-Bloomberg employee who uploaded the messages file, had a line in his previously also publicly available CV that the accuracy rate of the engine he'd worked on was "99.7 percent in an independent audit performed by a large institutional client." Cool, no? For those who have never seen such messages, imagine there's a hedge fund called the Alphaville Advanced Returns Fund. AARF trades sovereign credit default swaps. Loads of banks want to trade with it, thereby earning a spread. How do AARF traders figure out the latest prices in this over-the-counter market? Well, as luck would have it, AARF's traders get Bloomberg messages from traders all day with indicative CDS prices for a range of sovereigns, some with bonus market commentary and general musings. Here's one such message, sourced from FT Alphaville's overactive imagination: From: bigbanktr8der@bloomieberg.net To: penguin01@aarf.com European markets quite after a light session in asia with limited newsflow. Euro pmis out this morn cld provide direction. sun is shining, prob wont last long, this is england. The last four lines contain CDS bids and asks in basis points. The parsing engine will know that, and also, for example, that "FR" means France. Other traders may use different abbreviations for the same sovereigns. Still other messages will contain different assets, like bonds. The engine has to deal with all of it, pulling out the prices cleanly. If, at some point, AARF did actually want to trade, say by selling credit default swap protection on France, then the useful thing to have is a dashboard where all the quotes sent by dealers would be presented. That way one could see the prices quoted throughout the day, and which dealer may have the best available price. Just like CMA Quotevision or Markit Quotes allows, as per the above pictures. So this guy was involved in a Bloomberg Message Mining project (for his then employer's parsing engine), and well, whoops he plunked the file in an unsecure location. Damn. Sucks to be him. Seriously. We really think it has got to suck to be him. It's unlucky for Bloomberg too that such a screw-up came to light now, just when a wider institutional policy of allowing reporters access to Bloomberg users" function usage history also hit the fan in a big way - that being the earlier thread to this story, that Tracy reported on, after the New York Post got wind of complaints issued by Goldman Sachs. In case that story is still confusing you, travel back in time to 2008 when the first big waves of layoffs were going on in banks. If one was in a bank then, one would be wise to ensure that their BIO was up-to-date with say... an alternate gmail/yahoo email address, and perhaps ensure that all the colleges/universities plus work history sections were filled out. Just in case one suddenly got a call to a conference room, and then a request to surrender their BlackBerry and exit the building immediately. Or maybe one could try to sneakily browse job listings on Bloomberg, in between using the more usual pricing functionality. Fast forward to whatever the latest scandal is, and a reporter with access to the function usage history of a banker could, in effect, have a guess about whether the main characters in said scandal were on their way out. Bloomberg has since blocked reporters from accessing this information, so the party is, in any case, over. What we're left with is a spot of vindication for those in financial institutions who are on the more paranoid side of the spectrum, and an ex-Bloomberg guy who probably has a very red face right now. Said dude is almost certainly the unwitting catalyst for a number of data providers to nervously check who exactly has the requisite permissions to download such sensitive data and make it available outside the system. As for one's own Bloomberg terminal, lovely Bloomberg terminal, one would do well to note that data do not abide by the principle of IBGYBG. Additional reporting by Daniel Schäfer. Related links: Central banks question Bloomberg privacy - FT Bloomberg alerted to access issue in 2011 - FT Bloomberg scrambles to reassure users - FT