Claude 101 for Investing (3/4) - Stock Analysis
Every time you look at a company you ask roughly the same questions, then have to remember what they were. A Skill is that checklist, written once, and it works on the free plan.
Create Your Own Stock Analysis with Claude
Skills, so every company gets the same treatment. Most people ask what Claude thinks of a company and get a different answer every time they ask. This is the fix, and it takes about 15 minutes.
This is the third of 4 setup guides. Part 2 built a Project. The one thing you need from it here: a Project holds the context for one thing you follow, and a Skill is different because it holds a method you apply to everything. Start here or start anywhere, each part works on its own. Part 4 is linked here as it gets published.
- 01 Set Up Claude for Investing
- 02 Teach Claude Your Investment Context
- 03 Create Your Own Stock Analysis with Claude
- 04 Turn Claude's Answers Into Documents You Keep
The 4 sections that do the work. Nothing here needs any prior knowledge of Claude.
- 02What a Skill actually is2 parts, 1 toggle to switch on, and how it differs from a Project.
- 03The 4 ways to add oneOnly 1 of them is right for this, and it needs no file at all.
- 04Build your stock analysisThe 5 checks, written once, applied to every company you look at.
- 05The traps to avoidThe skill sits there doing nothing, and the cause is almost always one line.
The repetition problem
You have looked at 4 companies this year and each one got a different quality of answer. That was not the model being weak.
Almost everyone starts the same way.
- A different length and a different shape every time
- Covers whatever it decides is interesting that day
- Some figures dated, some not, no way to tell which
- 2 companies come out impossible to line up side by side
- The same 5 checks, in the same order, every time
- Weighted to what actually matters for that company
- Every figure carries a source and a date
- 2 companies come out genuinely comparable
What a Skill actually is
A Skill is a set of instructions you save once, and Claude loads it by itself whenever the job matches.
It helps to think of it as less like prompting and more like teaching. You are not asking for something case by case. You are telling Claude how you want it to think about a whole topic, once, and then never typing it again.
A Skill has 2 parts, and they do completely different jobs.
One sentence saying when the skill applies. Claude reads this and nothing else until it decides the skill is relevant, which makes it the part that decides whether your skill ever gets used at all.
Most people describe what the skill does. Write when to use it instead. That single change fixes most skills that sit there doing nothing.
The method itself. The checks you want run, the rules you want followed, the shape you want the answer to come back in.
This is the long part. Section 4 builds it, and it is what turns a general answer into your analysis rather than anybody's.
Turning it on, in 2 places
Skills work on the free plan. There is nothing to pay for here. But they are switched off until you flip one toggle, and the list lives somewhere different from the toggle, which is where most people give up.
- Profile picture, bottom left, then Settings, then Capabilities. Turn on Code execution and file creation.Without this the Skills section is greyed out or missing entirely. It is the single most common reason someone cannot find the feature.
- Then Customize, then Skills, in the sidebar.This is the list. Anything you build lives here, next to the ones Anthropic already ships with.
Customize, then Skills. Everything you build lives under this tab.
Both hold instructions, so it is worth being precise. A Project holds the context for one thing you follow, and it only applies inside that Project. A Skill holds a method, and it works anywhere: a blank chat, any Project, on any company.
The test is simple. If you would have to paste the same instruction into all 5 of your Projects, it belongs in a Skill.
And they stack. Your company Project from Part 2 and your stock analysis skill run at the same time, so you get your own context and your own method together.
The 4 ways to add one
In Customize, Skills, hit Add. You get 4 options.
Claude interviews you about what the skill should do, then writes it for you. Useful if you are working out your own framework from scratch rather than following one.
You paste text into a box. No file, no download, nothing installed on your computer. It is the fastest of the 4 and the only one you need for this build.
This is the one you want.A ZIP file, usually put together by a developer.
You record yourself doing the task and talk through it as you go, and Claude turns the demonstration into the skill. This is the one option here that needs a paid plan.
Customize, Skills, then Add. The 4 options, with Create a skill the one you want.
You do not have to write every one yourself. Anthropic's marketplace holds ready made skills and plugins, and 4 of them are genuinely built for retail investors. I went through all 4, including the ones worth skipping, in What Claude's New Finance Agents Actually Do.