7 Claude Prompts for Smarter Investing Research

Read this annual report (10-K) and distill it for a careful non-professional investor.

[attach or paste the filing]

1. How does this company actually make money? Break revenue down by segment with rough percentages.
2. What changed vs. last year — in the business itself, not just the numbers?
3. Risk factors: which 3 of the listed risks are SPECIFIC to this company (skip the boilerplate every filing has)?
4. Read the footnotes and MD&A: any changes in accounting treatment, one-time items dressed as recurring, or growing gaps between net income and cash flow?
5. What questions would a skeptical analyst ask management after reading this?

Quote the filing directly for anything important. If something is unclear or missing, say so rather than smoothing over it.

Here is my investment thesis:
[write it out — the company, why you think it wins, your time horizon, what you paid or would pay]

Red-team it without mercy:
1. Restate my thesis in its weakest defensible form — what am I actually betting on?
2. What has to go RIGHT, in sequence, for this to work? Which link is most fragile?
3. Argue the bear case as a smart short-seller would — not strawmen, their best material.
4. What evidence, if I saw it in the next two quarters, should make me exit? Be specific enough that I can't rationalize past it.
5. What does the current price already assume? Am I paying for the optimistic scenario?

Do not reassure me. If the thesis is mostly vibes, say so.

Analyze this earnings call transcript:
[paste transcript]

1. What did management emphasize — and what did they conspicuously not mention that they discussed last quarter?
2. Decode the hedged language: list phrases like "largely on track" or "some softness" and what they likely mean.
3. Analyst Q&A: which questions did management actually answer, and which did they deflect? Deflections are data.
4. Guidance: what exactly was promised, in numbers? How does it compare to what they promised last time vs. what they delivered?
5. One-line verdict: did this call raise or lower the quality of information available to shareholders?

Here are my holdings and rough weights:
[list them — tickers/funds and % of portfolio]

Without giving buy/sell advice, X-ray the structure:
1. What are my REAL exposures once you look through the funds — by sector, geography, factor, and single-company overlap? (e.g. how many of my funds are secretly the same 7 mega-caps?)
2. What single scenario would hurt the most positions at once?
3. Where am I taking risks I'm probably not being paid for (overlap, correlation), vs. deliberate concentrated bets?
4. What questions should I be asking myself about this structure? Frame them as questions, not recommendations.

Company: [name]
What I believe their competitive advantage is: [your words]

Interrogate the moat:
1. Classify the claimed advantage: network effects, switching costs, scale economics, brand, regulation, or none of the above. What's the evidence FOR the classification — pricing power, retention, margins vs. peers?
2. Who has attacked this moat in the past 5 years and what happened?
3. What technology or behavior shift would make this moat irrelevant (not weaker — irrelevant)?
4. Rate the moat: durable / eroding / narrative. Justify with observable facts, and tell me what to watch that would signal erosion early.

Audit the costs and behaviors in my investing, not my picks.

My setup: [account types, funds and their expense ratios, how often you trade, tax situation basics]
My last 5 buy/sell decisions and roughly why: [honest list]

1. Total up what I'm paying annually in expense ratios and estimated trading/tax friction. Show the 20-year compounding cost of that drag on a [portfolio size] portfolio.
2. From my 5 decisions: what behavioral patterns do you see? (chasing recent performance, selling on drawdowns, thesis drift, position sizing by conviction or by mood?)
3. Which ONE change — in cost or behavior — would statistically matter most, based on what actually drives retail underperformance?
4. Design a simple rule I could adopt to interrupt my worst pattern before it executes.

I'm about to make this investment decision: [what and why, in your own words]

Interview me for a decision journal entry, one question at a time:
1. What's my specific expectation — over what time frame, with what confidence?
2. What information am I acting on, and what's its source and age?
3. What would make this a mistake even if the price goes my way (bad process, right outcome)?
4. Am I deciding differently than I would have a month ago? What changed — the facts or my mood?

Then write the entry: date, decision, reasoning, expected outcome, exit conditions, review date. Keep it under 150 words so I'll actually do this every time.