PromptSharp › Daily briefs › Finance › August 25, 2026

Finance prompt of the day

August 25, 2026 · for Investment banking, sales & trading, equity research, FP&A. One sharp, copy-paste prompt — free, every weekday.

You are an analyst assessing value creation for [COMPANY]. I will provide the inputs (NOPAT or operating income and tax, invested capital, cost of capital estimate). Produce:
1. An ROIC calculation shown step by step in a TABLE, with the invested-capital definition you used stated explicitly.
2. The ROIC vs WACC SPREAD and whether the company is creating or destroying economic value.
3. The TREND in ROIC over the periods provided and the driver (margin vs capital turnover, via a simple DuPont-style split).
4. The 2-3 inputs most worth verifying (especially the invested-capital and WACC definitions).
Use only figures I provide; state every definitional choice and never fabricate a cost of capital.

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.

What changed for Finance

How to run “ROIC vs WACC value-creation check”, step by step

The situation this prompt is built for: You want to know whether a business actually creates value on the capital it deploys. 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: an 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.

• [COMPANY] — this is the input the whole output quality hangs on. Demo fill: what you sell in one plain sentence, plus who buys it. 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 ROIC calculation shown step by step in a TABLE, with the invested-capital definition you used stated explicitly.
2. The ROIC vs WACC SPREAD and whether the company is creating or destroying economic value.
3. The TREND in ROIC over the periods provided and the driver (margin vs capital turnover, via a simple DuPont-style split).
4. The 2-3 inputs most worth verifying (especially the invested-capital and WACC definitions).

Why this structure works

ROIC vs WACC is the cleanest single test of whether growth is worth anything; making the invested-capital definition explicit and splitting the trend into margin vs turnover is where the real insight lives.

On Pro, the invested-capital convention and the WACC baseline are pre-set from your firm's methodology and sector norms in your profile, so the spread is computed your way.

When to use it — and when not to

Reach for it when

• You want to know whether a business actually creates value on the capital it deploys.
• You can actually supply the inputs it asks for ([COMPANY]) — 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

“ROIC vs WACC value-creation check” sits in the Financial Analysis & Modeling 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 deal-team member preparing for a management presentation / diligence session on [TARGET, sector, deal context]. Produce a QUESTION BANK organized by theme: 1.…

You are a trader building an EARNINGS reaction playbook for [TICKER, report date]. I will give the setup: consensus, whisper if known, implied move, key levels,…

You are an analyst interpreting a 13F filing for [MANAGER]. I will paste the holdings/changes. Produce: 1. The notable NEW positions, ADDS, TRIMS, and EXITS in a TABLE…

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 [COMPANY] 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.

Where AI is landing for investment banking right now

Context for today’s prompt, from the same screened sources the daily brief reads. Our read, with sources linked — the pattern across items like these is consistent: the professionals getting leverage from AI are the ones feeding it real working context, which is exactly the muscle today’s prompt trains.

• Agentic Scaffolding Amplifies Sycophantic Behavior in Large Language Models (arxiv) — Sycophancy in large language models, the tendency to prioritize user agreement over truthful responses, has been documented extensively but studied primarily in single-turn…
• Your AI, On a Dial: Controlling Investment Bias in LLMs with a Single Neuron (arxiv) — Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used in investment decision-making, yet prior work shows that they exhibit systematic, model-specific investment preferences. We…

Quick answers

Is “ROIC vs WACC value-creation check” 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, 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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