Researching Financial Markets - equities, indicies, ...

A quick list of our five most-used financial market databases, which I hope will make a little clearer the strengths of each from a research perspective.

WRDS – WRDS (Wharton Research Data Services) is the premier research database for business school academics worldwide. It provides a Web-query interface that is designed by researchers for researchers. At the University of Manchester, our subscriptions include: Compustat (North America), CRSP (stocks, indices, treasuries), CRSP/Compustat Merged (CCM), IBES (US and International), Thomson Reuters US Ownership (mutual funds, institutional-13f, insiders). For a fuller list see - Which databases are available through WRDS? In summary, if you are researching the US financial market then WRDS is well worth a look.

Datastream - Datastream from Thomson Reuters covers financial markets world wide. It is the most used database for quantitative research on UK equities. Licence and software restrictions mean that it is only available on specific PCs. Datastream’s coverage includes equities, equity indices, constituent lists, interest rates, economics. It includes Worldscope for company accounts, and IBES summary data.

Thomson One Banker – Thomson One Banker, also from Thomson Reuters, is a database that is aimed at financial market professionals rather than researchers. Compared with Datastream there is significant overlap, including Worldscope and IBES summary data, but  it does not provide as much historical data, does not include most inactive (dead) companies, and does not cover interest rates and economics. However, it does have a Web-interface and this gives access to modules - Deals Analysis, Ownership and Private Equity – that are not part of Datastream.

SDC Platinum – SDC Platinum, again from Thomson Reuters is a database that covers deals: mergers, acquisitions, IPOs (initial public offerings), secondary offerings. There is significant overlap between SDC Platinum and the Deals Analysis module in Thomson One Banker, but researchers often prefer SDC Platuinum because it doe not have the same restrictions on downloading data. See SDC Platinum and TOB deals for more detail.

Bloomberg - Bloomberg Professional, from Bloomberg, covers financial markets worldwide. It is also aimed at financial market professionals – providing lots of functions that give users an overview of the current state of the market. Like Datastream Bloomberg is only available on specific PCs. Bloomberg provides descriptive information, research and financial statistics on public companies worldwide; financial market information on currencies, commodities, bonds, indices, interest rates, derivatives; economic statistics; and over 3,000 business news stories per day. Bloomberg does not provide as much historical data as more research-oriented databases like WRDS and Datastream.

Professional development perspective

If you are interesting in getting a job in the city then your priorities are different from a researcher- you would probably choose to look at Bloomberg first, then Thomson One Banker, Datastream, WRDS and SDC Platinum.

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