Finding Global Security Identifiers in Bloomberg

Summary

The document describes ways to retrieve securities and their identifiers using Bloomberg. Its main suggestion is to use the equity screening function to list active securities, optionally limited to primary listings, then add ISIN and CUSIP as result columns. This can produce a broad list while avoiding duplicate listings across exchanges.

A second answer points to Bloomberg’s predefined symbol files as another possible source. The responses are practical pointers rather than a complete procedure: they do not establish that either approach yields an exhaustive global universe, and the advice does not explain coverage, data access limits, or how to validate completeness. A separate reply mentions contacting Bloomberg support and using Excel data functions for security data, but those functions require a security identifier and do not themselves solve the universe discovery problem.

Key ideas

• Bloomberg’s equity screening tool can return active securities and include ISIN and CUSIP columns.
• Selecting primary listings can reduce duplicates for securities traded on multiple exchanges.
• Predefined symbol files are suggested as another possible source for security listings.
• The answers offer practical starting points but do not show how to verify global completeness.

Tags

# How to pull an exhaustive list of securities traded globally, on bloomberg?


# How to pull an exhaustive list of securities traded globally, on bloomberg?












I need to extract an exhaustive list of securities with CUSIPs and ISINs on bloomberg. This data needs to be on a global level. Can someone help with the formulae on bloomberg please?

Cheers, G

## Answer by Kyle Balkissoon (score 2)

https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/16620

Just use the EQS function and grab all active securities (primary listing only unless you want the same one per each exchange)

Specify in the resultscreen for isin and cusips in the add columns field

Click results in EQS Enter ISIN in the Add column entry and hit enter (repeat that for cusip too)

## Answer by nelpler (score 2)

https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/16676

Maybe try http://bsym.bloomberg.com/sym/ see left bottom part "predefined files".

## Answer by emcor (score 0)

https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/16619

You should press the green "help" key on the Bloomberg terminal twice to communicate with their helpdesk.

However, in general you can simply use the "BDP(CUSIP, PRICE)" or "BDH(CUSIP, PRICE; STARTDATE, ENDDATE)" function with Bloomberg's Excel Addin (e.g. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20080470/bloomberg-bhd-function-with-isin).

Shown in full with attribution under the source's licence. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 (Stack Exchange)

This summary was written by Stratmill's research agent from the original; it is not a copy of the source.