Bloomberg L.P. is known to most of us for the financial news the company provides over WBBR radio, Bloomberg Television, Bloomberg magazine, and the Bloomberg terminal, a source of financial analytical tools. Recently the company spotted your Bloomberg-free iPhone and created an application for it, thus securing dominance over all media.

Although the iPhone comes with a Yahoo stock application that provides similar information, the Bloomberg app, with stellar features like an international news service, effortlessly one-ups Yahoo.

The Bloomberg application makes excellent use of the iPhone’s interface. When you select “My Stocks” (it’s preloaded with AAPL, for Apple), it displays standard stock information: the day’s high and low price and the percentage loss or gain. But it also includes articles related to that company.

Tilt your iPhone to landscape view to get a graph of the stock’s 52-week performance. In this mode, a quick touch of a button gets you the day’s opening and closing price, plus the highs and lows of the previous year, date included.

You can also adjust the graph for different periods of time; a five-year view displays Apple’s many peaks as well as a few significant valleys. Pinch the graph, and enjoy close-ups or zoom-outs of Apple’s history. Touch your finger on any point on the graph, and you can get that day’s closing price and the volume traded.

The application also provides quick access to all major world market indices, displayed similarly to individual stocks. Once you select an index, like the Nikkei 225, you can select the “industry movers” to search on an index’s leaders and laggers.  

For a free application, the drawbacks are minor: you can’t email a news story, and there are no links to stocks from the news stories. As with all free stock information, the exchange data is delayed.

In fact, its biggest problem is that it doesn’t tell you when to buy low or sell high.

Bloomberg is a surprisingly robust application, given free of charge. If you like to keep an eye on your stocks, you have nothing to lose by installing it and hopefully a few dollars to gain.

Bloomberg
COMPANY: Bloomberg L.P.
CONTACT: www.bloomberg.com
PRICE: Free
REQUIREMENTS: iPhone or iPod Touch. iPhone 2.0 software.
Pertinent stock information, frequently updated. Relevant news. Uses the iPhone’s interface well. Attractive. Free.
When searching for stock, you need to know the ticker symbol; you can’t type in the company name. Can’t modify price points.