Bloomberg News is one of the most influential sources of financial news and information in the world. With an army of over 2,700 journalists and analysts in 120 countries, Bloomberg produces a massive amount of content every day, spanning business, markets, technology, politics and more.
However, much of this valuable content is locked behind a paywall as part of the expensive Bloomberg Terminal subscription. A Terminal subscription can cost over $20,000 per year, putting it out of reach for many people.
But just because you don‘t have a Bloomberg subscription doesn‘t mean you can‘t access and utilize Bloomberg‘s reporting. With the power of web scraping, it‘s possible to collect Bloomberg articles and data for analysis – and even find ways to view full articles for free.
In this guide, we‘ll provide an in-depth look at scraping Bloomberg News, including why it‘s valuable, step-by-step scraping instructions, and tips for analyzing and applying the scraped data. We‘ll also explore some methods people use to get around the paywall and discuss the legality and ethics of doing so.
About Bloomberg News
Founded in 1990, Bloomberg News has grown into one of the largest and most reputable financial news organizations in the world. Bloomberg‘s 2,700 journalists and analysts produce an estimated 5,000 stories per day, covering a wide range of topics:
- Financial markets and asset classes
- Company earnings and corporate news
- Economies and central bank policy
- Technology and startups
- Politics and policy
- Industry analysis
- Wealth, lifestyle and more
Bloomberg News has a reputation for accuracy, depth and influence. Institutional investors, business leaders, policymakers and other professionals rely on Bloomberg for the latest news and insights. Bloomberg stories regularly move markets and shape industry conversations.
However, the majority of Bloomberg News content is paywalled as part of the Bloomberg Terminal, the company‘s flagship financial data and analytics platform. Without an expensive Terminal subscription, readers can only access a limited selection of articles.
The Benefits of Scraping Bloomberg News
So why would you want to scrape Bloomberg News articles and data? Here are a few key benefits:
1. Staying informed
By scraping the latest Bloomberg content, you can stay up to date on critical financial news, market developments and geopolitical events. This is especially useful for investors and businesses who need to track specific companies, asset classes, or topics. Instead of manually checking the Bloomberg website or relying on a small selection of free articles, you can set up automated scraping to collect all the relevant content.
2. Identifying trends and opportunities
Beyond just staying informed, Bloomberg‘s in-depth reporting and analysis can help you spot important trends and opportunities early. By applying data analysis and natural language processing (NLP) techniques to scraped Bloomberg articles, you can gain deeper insights into market sentiment, emerging technologies, consumer behavior shifts, and more. These insights can inform smarter investing and business decisions.
3. Competitive intelligence
Scraping Bloomberg articles that mention your company, competitors, or industry can provide valuable competitive intelligence. You can track competitors‘ moves, identify threats and opportunities, benchmark performance, and gather market research. Again, data analysis of scraped content can surface insights that would be difficult to uncover manually.
4. Input for financial models and algorithms
Quantitative investors and traders use complex models and algorithms to analyze financial data and news. Scraped Bloomberg content can serve as an input for these systems, such as feeding news sentiment into a trading algorithm. The breadth and quality of Bloomberg‘s reporting makes it a valuable source for these applications.
How People Try to Read Bloomberg for Free
Given the high cost of a Bloomberg Terminal subscription, many people try to find ways to access paywalled Bloomberg content for free. Here are some common methods:
Sometimes paid Bloomberg subscribers will share links to paywalled articles on social media or other websites. By searching Twitter, Google or aggregators like Reddit for the article headline in quotes, you may be able to find a working link that bypasses the paywall.
2. Using Incognito mode
Bloomberg and some other paywalled sites allow access to a limited number of articles for free per month before the paywall kicks in. By using your browser‘s Incognito or Private Browsing mode, or clearing cookies, you can sometimes reset the article counter and view additional free articles.
3. Disabling JavaScript
In some cases, the paywall is implemented using JavaScript. By disabling JavaScript in your browser settings, you may be able to prevent the paywall from loading and read the full article. However, this can also break other elements of the page.
4. Using browser extensions
Some browser extensions claim to be able to bypass paywalls on sites like Bloomberg. These typically work by modifying the page‘s JavaScript or HTML to remove the paywall elements. However, many of these extensions are unreliable or may contain malware.
It‘s important to note that circumventing paywalls may violate Bloomberg‘s terms of service and copyright. There are also potential security risks to using browser extensions or modifying site code. We‘ll discuss the legality and ethics of these methods further in a later section.
Step-by-Step Guide to Scraping Bloomberg News
Now let‘s dive into the actual process of scraping Bloomberg News content. Here‘s a step-by-step guide using the ParseHub web scraping tool as an example:
1. Download and install ParseHub
ParseHub is a powerful desktop-based web scraping tool that requires no coding. It offers a free plan that can handle small-scale scraping projects. Download the app from the ParseHub website and install it on your computer.
2. Enter the Bloomberg URL to scrape
Open ParseHub and click "New Project". Enter the URL of the Bloomberg page you want to scrape, such as the homepage or a specific topic or company page. ParseHub will load the page in its built-in browser.
3. Select the data to extract
Use your mouse to select the elements on the page you want to extract, such as the article headlines, URLs, excerpts, images, and dates. ParseHub will highlight the selected elements in green. You can also right-click and use the "Relative Select" tool to identify data patterns that repeat across articles.
4. Refine the data selections
ParseHub will display the extracted data in a preview pane on the right. Rename the data fields, remove any unwanted selections, and check that the data looks correct. You can also apply filters, regex, and other cleaning steps at this stage.
5. Test and run the scraper
Once you‘ve selected and refined the data, click "Get Data" to test the scraper on a single page. If everything looks good, use the Pagination tool to set up the scraper to navigate through multiple pages of search results. When ready, click "Run" to scrape all the data.
6. Export the scraped data
After the scrape job finishes, you can export the data in JSON, CSV or Excel formats. You can also set up ParseHub to run the scraper on a schedule and send the data to a URL or cloud storage service.
7. Analyze and visualize the data
The final step is to analyze the scraped Bloomberg data for insights. Depending on your goals, this could involve NLP, statistical analysis, data visualization, or integration with other data sets. Tools like Python, R or Tableau can be helpful for this stage.
With the scraped Bloomberg data, you can build news sentiment models, track market reactions to events, identify correlations and anomalies, and surface trends across companies and topics. The data can inform trading strategies, risk models, investment research, competitive analysis, and more.
Legality and Ethics of Scraping Paywalled Content
Before scraping Bloomberg or any other paywalled news source, it‘s important to consider the legal and ethical implications.
In terms of legality, scraping itself is generally permitted under the fair use doctrine of copyright law, as long as you‘re only extracting facts and not republishing copyrighted content. However, bypassing a paywall or authentication system to access content may violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and the site‘s terms of service.
There‘s also an ethical question of whether it‘s right to circumvent paywalls and access content without paying for it. News organizations like Bloomberg invest heavily in their journalism and rely on subscription revenue to fund their work. By scraping paywalled content or sharing workarounds, you could argue that you‘re undermining that business model and making it harder for quality journalism to survive.
Ultimately, it‘s up to individuals and businesses to weigh the legal and ethical risks against the benefits of scraping paywalled sources like Bloomberg. If you do choose to scrape, be sure to respect copyright, keep the data for internal use only, and consider purchasing a subscription if the information is valuable to your work.
The Future of Paywalled News and Web Scraping
As more news organizations erect paywalls to monetize their content, the demand for and controversy around web scraping is likely to grow. Publishers are constantly working on stronger defenses against paywall circumvention, while scrapers develop new techniques to evade detection.
At the same time, the legality of scraping itself is still being tested in the courts. While scraping public data is generally protected, a number of recent lawsuits have pushed back on the practice. It remains to be seen how legal precedents around scraping will evolve.
Looking ahead, it‘s possible that news paywalls will become more porous as publishers seek to balance subscription revenue with reach and impact. Some sites are experimenting with dynamic paywalls that adapt to user behavior, as well as tiered access models and micropayments.
On the web scraping side, tools are becoming more user-friendly and powerful, lowering the barrier to entry. Scraped news data is also becoming a more important input for financial algorithms, media monitoring, and AI applications. As the value of this data grows, so will the incentives to acquire it through scraping.
Ultimately, the future of paywalled news and web scraping will depend on how publishers, readers, regulators and technologists negotiate the tensions between access and sustainability. For now, those who choose to scrape should do so thoughtfully and responsibly.
Conclusion
Scraping Bloomberg News can be a powerful way to access a trove of valuable financial news and data without a costly Terminal subscription. With web scraping tools like ParseHub, it‘s possible to extract clean, structured data from Bloomberg articles at scale.
This data can help investors, entrepreneurs and analysts stay informed, surface insights, and make data-driven decisions. Scraped Bloomberg data can also power financial models, algorithms, news sentiment analysis, and competitive intelligence.
However, scraping paywalled content like Bloomberg News raises legal and ethical questions. It‘s important to respect copyright, abide by terms of service, and consider the impact on the news organization‘s business.
Ultimately, whether and how to scrape Bloomberg News is a decision each individual or business must make based on their needs and risk tolerance. As the demand for quality news and data continues to grow, the landscape of paywalls and web scraping is sure to evolve in interesting ways.