Noah Brier | September 12, 2025
The Bloomberg Terminal Edition
On the 0.01% percent’s Craiglist, and why it works to keep a legendary UI the same.
Colin here. The Bloomberg Terminal is an icon of global finance, but to outsiders it looks more like a Cold War control panel than modern software. There are color-coded keys, dense screens, menus buried within menus. This isn’t an accident.
Bloomberg has always resisted change. The keyboard stays intentionally archaic so that veterans never have to break muscle memory. The interface remains dense and counterintuitive because the friction itself has become part of trading culture.
And hidden inside this rigid architecture is something unexpected: POSH, a classifieds marketplace that’s not for apartments or used furniture. It’s a discreet forum where Terminal users list Ferraris, Picassos, Tuscan villas, and Gulfstream jets. Business Insider called it the “private Craigslist for the 0.01 percent.”
Bloomberg could have easily killed this feature, citing it as a distraction. The company is famously pragmatic, billing itself as indispensable financial infrastructure. But POSH lives on.
Why is this interesting?
It shows how even the most utilitarian systems get shaped by their users’ culture. Traders and bankers live inside the Terminal twelve hours a day—it’s their workplace, chat client, and analytics suite, all rolled into one. So naturally, it reflects their world in all of its contradictions. It needs to be ruthlessly functional, but it also absorbs the eccentricities and status markers of the people using it.
Bloomberg has always been as much a social object as a data pipe. Those orange and black screens are a badge of belonging; the unique keyboard is a rite of passage.
In this context, POSH signals that the Bloomberg community isn’t just about trading credit default swaps, but also about trading Ferraris, Bordeaux, and Patek Philippes, currencies of status that matter especially to a certain set.
Bloomberg likely built it because their most important users wanted a safe, discreet space for side trades, backed by identity and vetting. Once something like that exists inside the machine, it becomes part of the lore.
The story reminds us that products carry the imprint and well worn patina of the cultures they serve. Bloomberg could have stripped the Terminal down to only mission-critical functions. Instead, they kept a bit of decadence with a wink. It’s about knowing your customer. (CJN)