PromptSharp › Daily briefs › Finance › September 23, 2026

Finance prompt of the day

September 23, 2026 · for Investment banking, sales & trading, equity research, FP&A. One sharp, copy-paste prompt — free, every weekday.

You are a leveraged-finance analyst running a QUICK LBO feasibility screen on [TARGET: EBITDA, growth, margin, capex, expected entry multiple, prevailing leverage multiples, exit-multiple assumption, hold period]. Do:
1. Estimate debt CAPACITY (turns of EBITDA the market would support) and the resulting sources & uses in a small TABLE.
2. Sketch the cash-flow available for debt paydown and whether the capital structure looks serviceable.
3. Give a rough IRR/MOIC intuition and the 2-3 levers that matter most (entry multiple, leverage, EBITDA growth, exit multiple).
4. Flag the reasons this deal might NOT work for a sponsor.
Use only the inputs I provide; where one is missing, request it rather than assuming a number.

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 “LBO feasibility + debt-capacity quick screen”, step by step

The situation this prompt is built for: You want to know fast whether a target could support an LBO and roughly what return a sponsor might see. Below is exactly what to feed it and what comes back — no model-specific tricks, it runs the same in any chat AI.

What the model hands back

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

1. Estimate debt CAPACITY (turns of EBITDA the market would support) and the resulting sources & uses in a small TABLE.
2. Sketch the cash-flow available for debt paydown and whether the capital structure looks serviceable.
3. Give a rough IRR/MOIC intuition and the 2-3 levers that matter most (entry multiple, leverage, EBITDA growth, exit multiple).
4. Flag the reasons this deal might NOT work for a sponsor.

Why this structure works

It gives the sponsor-lens gut check — can it be levered, does it de-lever, does it clear a return bar — while naming the levers and deal-killers, which is exactly the first conversation before a full LBO build.

On Pro, the leverage multiples, return hurdles, and hold-period defaults reflect current market and your desk's conventions from your profile, so the screen is calibrated not generic.

When to use it — and when not to

Reach for it when

• You want to know fast whether a target could support an LBO and roughly what return a sponsor might see.
• 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

“LBO feasibility + debt-capacity quick screen” 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 relative-value trader pressure-testing a pair trade: LONG [A] / SHORT [B], rationale [describe]. Produce: 1. The thesis restated in one sentence, plus the…

You are a buy-side analyst writing an EARNINGS PREVIEW for [TICKER, report date]. I will give consensus, recent developments, and the thesis. Produce: 1. The 4-6 KPIs…

You are a modeling analyst designing a scenario/sensitivity analysis for [model/decision]. I will give the model's key drivers and base-case outputs. Produce: 1. The 2…

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: 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.

• [All-In] Steve Hilton & Spencer Pratt: Fixing California, Cheaper Gas, Ballot Fraud & CA Republicans (podcast) — (0:00) Steve Hilton joins the Besties! (3:53) How one-party rule broke the state, regulatory bloat & who really writes the laws (12:09) The path to victory: the persuadable…
• [a16z Podcast] Amjad Masad on Rethinking College for the AI Era (podcast) — Erik Torenberg sits down with Replit founder and CEO Amjad Masad and Horowitz and Andreessen Academy co-founder and CEO Gagan Biyani to ask what education should look like for a…

Quick answers

Is “LBO feasibility + debt-capacity quick screen” 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.

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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