Bloomberg PX_LAST Adjustments and Total Return Data
Summary
The document explains that Bloomberg’s PX_LAST generally represents the last traded price, while the adjustments applied to historical equity prices can depend on terminal or download settings. Those settings may account for corporate actions such as splits, spin-offs, or dividends, and API requests may allow users to override them. Bloomberg’s field lookup can be used to confirm a field’s definition, while settings inspection helps identify adjustment choices. A separate field, TOT_RETURN_INDEX_NET_DVDS, is offered for users seeking a total return series rather than a price series.
These distinctions matter when calculating security returns: a price history adjusted for some corporate actions can produce different returns from an unadjusted one, and a total return index includes a different return concept than a last-price field. The replies differ in how they characterize PX_LAST, including one claim that it is adjusted; the overall guidance is to verify the field definition and settings for the specific data source. The document does not provide a universal default or a detailed return-calculation example.
Key ideas
- PX_LAST generally refers to a security’s last traded price, but historical adjustment behavior can depend on Bloomberg settings.
- Corporate action adjustments may include splits, spin-offs, and dividends.
- Bloomberg field definitions and download settings should be checked before calculating returns.
- A total return index field is an alternative when the desired series includes dividends.
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Full text
# Px last in Bloomberg # Px last in Bloomberg This is my first post to this forum. I want to calculate security returns , so therefore, I have downloaded the PX last price from Bloomberg. My question is: What is PX last in Bloomberg? Is this Adjusted closing price of a security? ## Answer by Stravog (score 6) https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/48706 What is px_last is rather complex and will depends on the terminal options installed where you downloaded it. Type DPDF to see what are your settings. You can adjust closing price to account for Splits/Spin offs (and many other things) or not, adjust to account for dividends or not. If you are downloading this data through the api (say excel), you can manually overrides all those fields. Hope it helps ## Answer by nbbo2 (score 4) https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/48707 If you are interested in a Total Return Index, rather than a Price, you could also let Bloomberg compute it for you by retrieving the field TOT_RETURN_INDEX_NET_DVDS (instead of PX_LAST). An advantage of this is you do not have to worry about the details of return calculation (let Bloomberg handle it, they can do it more accurately than other people) and possibly you make your code more readable as it is independent of DPDF settings. (I prefer to leave those settings to their default values). ## Answer by Jason p (score 2) https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/48704 When unsure about the meaning of a field, type FLDS < go> and find the field you are referring to (PX_LAST in this case) to find Bloomberg's definition ## Answer by JoshK (score 2) https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/48710 In general, "PX_LAST" is the last traded price for a security. This updates when you set up the BDP/BDH formula and when you refresh the workbook. If you want a live, streaming, price, use "LAST_PRICE". As mentioned above, the DPDF settings will affect corporate actions adjustments for equities when looking at price history. ## Answer by Kayla Lee (score 0) https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/73614 PX last is the adjusted closing price of a security on Bloomberg. This price takes into account any corporate actions such as stock splits or dividends that have occurred since the last trading day.
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