PromptSharp › Daily briefs › Finance › July 14, 2026

Finance prompt of the day

July 14, 2026 · for Investment banking, sales & trading, equity research, FP&A. One sharp, copy-paste prompt — free, every weekday.

You are an equity capital markets banker framing FINANCING STRUCTURE OPTIONS for an issuer I describe: [ISSUER: size, listing status, ownership, use of proceeds, urgency]. Produce:
1. An OPTIONS GRID across candidate structures (follow-on / marketed offering, overnight block/bought deal, ATM program, rights issue, convertible/mandatory, PIPE). Columns: mechanics, typical use case, dilution & signaling, execution speed, market-condition dependence, key risks.
2. A short RANKING for this issuer's stated objective, with the reasoning that would change the ranking if one input changed.
3. The OMITTED-OPTION check: name any structure I did not consider and why it might fit.
4. The 3 questions to resolve with the issuer before recommending.

Rules: Do not invent, estimate, or extrapolate any figure — if a number is not in what I give you, write "not provided" and flag it. Mark every claim I should verify externally before relying on it. Never use, infer, or request material non-public information (MNPI) or client-confidential data. Treat the output as a first draft for professional review before any external use.

How to run “ECM offering-structure options grid”, step by step

The situation this prompt is built for: A client needs to raise equity and you want a defensible menu of structures with the real trade-offs before you recommend one. Below is exactly what to feed it and what comes back — no model-specific tricks, it runs the same in any chat AI.

What each placeholder does

Demo profile for the example fills: a equity research associate on a mid-cap sector coverage team, working in Excel, a chat AI model, and your firm's data terminal. Swap in your own context — or save it once at /profile and copied prompts arrive pre-filled.

• [ISSUER: size, listing status, ownership, use of proceeds, urgency] — this is the input the whole output quality hangs on. Each part narrows the answer: issuer: size; listing status; ownership; use of proceeds; urgency. Demo fill: your own issuer: size, listing status, ownership, use of proceeds, urgency — one or two concrete lines beats a paragraph of vague context. Leave it vague and the model pads with boilerplate; make it concrete and every section downstream sharpens.

What the model hands back

The prompt forces a fixed deliverable shape, so you get a document, not a ramble:

1. An OPTIONS GRID across candidate structures (follow-on / marketed offering, overnight block/bought deal, ATM program, rights issue, convertible/mandatory, PIPE). Columns: mechanics, typical use case, dilution & signaling, execution speed, market-condition dependence, key risks.
2. A short RANKING for this issuer's stated objective, with the reasoning that would change the ranking if one input changed.
3. The OMITTED-OPTION check: name any structure I did not consider and why it might fit.
4. The 3 questions to resolve with the issuer before recommending.

Why this structure works

The costliest ECM mistake is defaulting to one structure without pricing the alternatives; a grid plus an explicit omitted-option check forces the full menu and the signaling/dilution trade-offs into view before a recommendation.

On Pro, the structure menu and ranking weights arrive pre-tilted to your coverage (e.g. converts for growth issuers, ATMs for utilities) from your saved profile.

When to use it — and when not to

Reach for it when

• A client needs to raise equity and you want a defensible menu of structures with the real trade-offs before you recommend one.
• You can actually supply the inputs it asks for ([ISSUER: size, listing status, ownership, use of proceeds, urgency]) — this prompt is an amplifier for real context, not a substitute for it.
• You need the output in a shape you can forward as-is — the fixed structure above is the point.

Skip it when

• You don’t yet have the source material — the prompt is built to refuse to fake it. Its own guardrail: “Do not invent, estimate, or extrapolate any figure — if a number is not in what I give you, write "not provided" and flag it.” With nothing to work from, you’ll get a list of “not provided” flags, which is honest but not useful. Collect the inputs first.
• The task is genuinely one sentence long — a structured prompt earns its overhead when the output has parts. For quick one-off questions, just ask.

Adapting today’s prompt for adjacent roles

“ECM offering-structure options grid” sits in the Banking lane of the finance pool. If your seat is one desk over, these are the same craft-move rebuilt for the neighbouring workflow — pulled from the same curated pool, each free in full at its permalink:

You are a desk strategist building a POSITIONING & SENTIMENT map for [NAME / ASSET / MACRO THEME]. Using only the data I paste below, produce: 1. A POSITIONING read…

You are a buy-side analyst pressure-testing my VARIANT PERCEPTION on [NAME]. Using my notes below, produce: 1. A CONSENSUS-vs-MY-VIEW table: on the 3-4 issues that…

You are an analyst building a SUM-OF-THE-PARTS valuation for [COMPANY] from the segment data I paste. Produce: 1. A SEGMENT MAP: for each segment, the most appropriate…

Common failure modes (and the fixes)

• Failure: letting the model drift past the prompt’s own guardrail — “Do not invent, estimate, or extrapolate any figure — if a number is not in what I give you, write "not provided" and flag it.” Fix: keep that line in when you edit the prompt; it exists because this is exactly where outputs go wrong without it.
• Failure: letting the model drift past the prompt’s own guardrail — “Mark every claim I should verify externally before relying on it.” Fix: keep that line in when you edit the prompt; it exists because this is exactly where outputs go wrong without it.
• Failure: letting the model drift past the prompt’s own guardrail — “Never use, infer, or request material non-public information (MNPI) or client-confidential data.” Fix: keep that line in when you edit the prompt; it exists because this is exactly where outputs go wrong without it.
• Failure: filling [ISSUER: size, listing status, ownership, use of proceeds, urgency] with a vague summary. The output can only be as specific as this input — generic context in, generic deliverable out. Fix: paste raw specifics (real names, real numbers, real constraints), then trim the model’s output, not your input.
• Failure: accepting the first pass. Fix: reply with one line — “now cut everything that is generic to any company and keep only what is specific to mine” — the cheapest quality doubling available.

Quick answers

Is “ECM offering-structure options grid” free to use?

Yes — every weekday issue of the PromptSharp Finance publishes one full pool prompt free on the web, and it stays free in the archive. Pro is the daily full prompt set, the searchable archive, personalization, and MCP delivery — not a paywall on this page.

Which AI model does this prompt work with?

Any of them. Every PromptSharp prompt is model-agnostic plain text — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, or a local model. No plugins, no custom GPTs; paste and run.

How is the finance prompt of the day chosen?

Deterministic rotation over the curated finance pool — currently 75 prompts across 5 sections — the same single source the paid brief reads. Same date, same prompt: the archive never silently changes under you.

What goes in the [BRACKETED] placeholders?

Your context — the walkthrough above covers each one. The short rule: the more concrete the fill (real names, numbers, constraints), the sharper the output. Save your details once at /profile and web copies arrive pre-filled.

How do I get this in my inbox instead?

The capture form above — PromptSharp Finance status is honest: live briefs send every weekday; pre-launch verticals email their free list the day the email edition starts.

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