AI Analyst for Pennies: 10 Prompts for Claude That Will Transform Your Market Research Approach
The market for analytical services is undergoing a tectonic shift. While traditional consulting firms charge thousands of dollars for fundamental analysis, enthusiasts and professionals are finding ways to obtain comparable quality for the cost of an AI subscription. This involves a set of ten specialized prompts for Claude that transform the language model into a full-fledged stock market and cryptocurrency analyst.
This toolkit does not provide trading recommendations—it structures the research process at the level of a leading consulting firm. Each prompt assigns Claude a specific role and parameters for analysis.
The First Five: From General Overview to Valuation
The first prompt places Claude in the position of a senior analyst preparing a beginner-friendly report on a company or ticker. It covers the business model, revenue sources, industry trends, competitors, financial results, valuation, growth drivers, and bull/base/bear scenarios. The key requirement is to rely on recent public sources, indicate dates, and clearly separate facts from assumptions.
The second prompt breaks down the company's latest earnings call: five main takeaways, changes in revenue, margins, management guidance, management tone, analyst concerns, pleasant and unpleasant surprises. It also generates a table of key metrics with current and previous results and an explanation of why each matters.
The third prompt turns Claude into a skeptical analyst who looks for red flags in revenue quality, margins, cash flow, debt, dilution, insider actions, and management language. Each issue is assigned a severity rating, and a total risk score from 1 to 10 is output at the end.
The fourth and fifth prompts focus on competitive advantages and valuation. One assesses the company's "moat"—brand, network effects, switching costs, scale, intellectual property—on a scale and compares it with competitors. The second compares the company with competitors on multiples (P/E, forward P/E, EV/revenue, EV/EBITDA) and explains whether it appears cheap, fairly valued, or expensive.
The Second Five: From DCF Model to a Beginner's Checklist
The sixth prompt helps build realistic assumptions for a discounted cash flow (DCF) model. It generates bear, base, and bull scenarios for revenue growth, margins, tax rate, capital expenditures, and discount rate, explaining the logic behind each assumption.
The seventh prompt creates a catalyst calendar for 3, 6, and 12 months: earnings reports, product launches, investor days, regulatory decisions, lawsuits, macro events, management changes, buybacks, and dividends. For each event, it specifies timing, impact, upside and downside risks, confidence level, and source.
The eighth prompt evaluates the management team: the CEO's track record, the CFO's credibility, forecast accuracy, transparency, capital allocation, acquisitions, insider ownership size, and compensation. The ninth prompt simulates an investment committee debate, where Claude creates a bull analyst and a bear analyst, and at the end, a neutral judge explains which position is better supported.
The tenth prompt turns Claude into a patient teacher who explains the company in simple terms: what it does, how it makes money, what could go right and wrong, and how things stand with profitability, growth, debt, and valuation. At the end, a beginner's checklist is generated.
My comment as an analyst: This set of prompts is not a replacement for professional analysis, but a powerful tool for initial screening and structuring information. However, critical data verification and decision-making remain with the investor. AI handles routine tasks well, but not the context and intuition that come with experience. Use these prompts as a starting point, but never hand over control of capital to an algorithm without your own verification.