MathWorks Delivers Datafeed Toolbox

The MathWorks, Inc. has announced the new Datafeed Toolbox, which provides a connection between The MathWorks core product, MATLAB, and Bloomberg L.P.'s financial information services. This software tool substantially enhances The MathWorks existing set of tools for financial professionals. For the first time, quantitative researchers and financial engineers can directly access live, historical, and time series data from a leading worldwide provider and use the data to develop complex financial and analytic models in the MATLAB environment.

Ideally suited to financial analysis and modeling in fixed income, portfolio management, and risk management, the Datafeed Toolbox integrates MATLAB's built-in capabilities for programming, mathematical and financial functions, data analysis, and graphics with data from real-time financial information sources. Using the toolbox's graphical user interface (GUI), financial professionals can link to Bloomberg's data services to import real-time data, request time series and historical data, and locate security ticker symbols from within the MATLAB environment. Once data is imported into MATLAB, it can be analyzed using other application-specific tools in the MATLAB environment, such as the Financial Time Series, GARCH, Neural Network, and Statistics toolboxes. The GUI also allows users to establish multiple Bloomberg connections and monitor the status and history of each connection.

"We're pleased to be part of this new opportunity to integrate our financial services platform for data with the proven MATLAB environment for analysis and application development," said Lou Eccleston, Managing Director, Sales and Trading at Bloomberg. "Using the Datafeed Toolbox, professionals can directly access Bloomberg data for the vital information they require to execute their analyses."

"Through our new development partnership with Bloomberg and the Datafeed Toolbox, we are responding to our customers' need for access to market data so they can build their models and analytic tools within the familiar MATLAB environment," said Eugene McGoldrick, Ph.D., Development Manager, Financial Products, at The MathWorks. "The delivery of the Datafeed Toolbox follows The MathWorks successful introductions of three other application-specific toolboxes for financial engineering in 1999 and exemplifies the Company's broad support of financial research, analysis, and application development."

Like all of MATLAB's companion toolboxes, the Datafeed Toolbox is composed of programmable MATLAB files to provide users with access to its source code. This allows users to view, edit, and modify the toolbox functions or add their own, thereby extending and customizing the environment to suit their individual needs.

Using The MathWorks Tools for Financial Application Development

The Datafeed Toolbox is one of many MATLAB-based products that provide a complete, fully integrated set of tools for financial engineering. These tools support the entire financial application development process from academic research to quantitative research and prototyping, all the way through to application development and deployment to the end user through legacy systems. With MATLAB's open, component-based architecture, users may choose only the toolboxes and extensions they need.

Pricing and Availability

The Datafeed Toolbox is available immediately and can be purchased from The MathWorks Store at http://www.mathworks.com/store for Windows(R) 95, 98, and NT. North American pricing for the Datafeed Toolbox starts at $1,000, and the product requires MATLAB 5.3.1 and Bloomberg on the same PC or workstation.

About Bloomberg L.P.

Bloomberg Financial Markets, founded in 1981, is a global multi-media based distributor of information services, combining news, data and analysis for financial markets and businesses. Bloomberg provides real-time pricing, historical pricing, indicative data, analytics and electronic communications 24 hours a day through over 125,000 BLOOMBERG(TM) systems used by over 250,000 financial professionals in 100 countries worldwide. Electronic trading products include: BLOOMBERG TRADEBOOK, BLOOMBERG POWERMATCH and BLOOMBERG BONDTRADER.

About The MathWorks, Inc.

Established in 1984, The MathWorks, Inc., a company of 500 people based in Natick, Mass., develops, markets, and supports MATLAB, Simulink, and a family of data analysis toolboxes for engineers, scientists, and other technical professionals. MATLAB provides the foundation and computational engine for all of The MathWorks products. Widely recognized as the industry's premier language for technical computing, MATLAB provides comprehensive math and visualization functionality, and a powerful high-level language for users to interactively explore, analyze, design, and prototype solutions to their problems. The MathWorks products are used throughout the world in industries such as automotive, aerospace, telecommunications, economics, finance, and medical. More than 400,000 users at the world's leading industrial, government, and education organizations rely on The MathWorks products for tremendous gains in productivity.