Podcasts about sheraz

Sheraz Mian (@ZacksInvestmentNews) says 1Q earnings season is less about 1Q and more about the tariffs impact reflected in company's upcoming guidance updates. In some respects, he sees similarities to the peak COVID pandemic and how that affected companies' abilities to provide guidance. Sheraz discusses the first round of bank earnings and the state of the U.S. consumer.======== Schwab Network ========Empowering every investor and trader, every market day.Subscribe to the Market Minute newsletter - https://schwabnetwork.com/subscribeDownload the iOS app - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/schwab-network/id1460719185Download the Amazon Fire Tv App - https://www.amazon.com/TD-Ameritrade-Network/dp/B07KRD76C7Watch on Sling - https://watch.sling.com/1/asset/191928615bd8d47686f94682aefaa007/watchWatch on Vizio - https://www.vizio.com/en/watchfreeplus-exploreWatch on DistroTV - https://www.distro.tv/live/schwab-network/Follow us on X – / schwabnetwork Follow us on Facebook – / schwabnetwork Follow us on LinkedIn - / schwab-network About Schwab Network - https://schwabnetwork.com/about

In this NGPF Podcast episode, Tim Ranzetta is joined by Sheraz, Ben, and Charley from FinTeens, a student-run organization focused on educating teens about personal finance. Starting on TikTok, FinTeens has grown into a global community, offering interactive content and competitions. The group shares insights on topics like investing, budgeting, college costs, and more, and how they've used social media to make financial education accessible and engaging. Tune in to hear how these young leaders are empowering their peers and spreading financial knowledge.

The mother of Mustafa Amir, Wajeeha Amir, comes on the The Pakistan Experience to discuss the facts of the Mustafa Amir murder case and tell us about her fight for Justice.The Pakistan Experience is an independently produced podcast looking to tell stories about Pakistan through conversations. Please consider supporting us on Patreon:https://www.patreon.com/thepakistanexperienceTo support the channel:Jazzcash/Easypaisa - 0325 -2982912Patreon.com/thepakistanexperienceAnd Please stay in touch:https://twitter.com/ThePakistanExp1https://www.facebook.com/thepakistanexperiencehttps://instagram.com/thepakistanexpeperienceThe podcast is hosted by comedian and writer, Shehzad Ghias Shaikh. Shehzad is a Fulbright scholar with a Masters in Theatre from Brooklyn College. He is also one of the foremost Stand-up comedians in Pakistan and frequently writes for numerous publications. Instagram.com/shehzadghiasshaikhFacebook.com/Shehzadghias/Twitter.com/shehzad89Join this channel to get access to perks:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC44l9XMwecN5nSgIF2Dvivg/joinChapters:0:00 Introduction1:30 Were Armaghan and Mustafa friends?6:03 Misconceptions on the Media7:30 The Search for Mustafa14:00 The Girl and Texts22:08 Sheraz and how Mustafa was trapped24:33 Weed26:32 Fake News on the Media29:45 Mark X with no Number Plate33:00 What happened that fateful night37:30 What happened after and the Ransom Call43:40 Armaghan on the run and stand-off with the Police46:24 A Mother's fight for Justice59:00 Sheraz is not innocent1:00:38 Sahir Hasan and Drugs1:03:22 ANF Case against Mustafa1:04:48 Armaghan's Parents1:07:30 Koi Pressure hai?1:10:00 The Murder1:15:24 Audience Questions

Dr Sheraz Daya is an outstanding ophthalmologist who has done so much for the advancement of our field. He has held many leadership positions and he encourages entrepreneurship in ophthalmology and has launched a meeting with colleagues in that regard. This meeting, Ophthalpreneurs is going to be next month March 14-17 in Italy and you are welcome to use this link to sign up. In our podcast we discuss the importance of entrepreneurship and how every ophthalmologist (including you) can get involved. We feature a new podcast every week on Sundays and they are uploaded to all major podcast services (click links here: Apple, Google, Spotify) for enjoying as you drive to work or exercise. I am really excited to share these amazing podcasts with you. The full video of the podcast will also be here on CataractCoach as well as on our YouTube channel. Our podcast is now sponsored by Harrow, Inc and we are thankful for their support.

Follow the Balochistan times on Instagram.Further reading on the issues:Written by Sheraz: https://www.newsecuritybeat.org/2022/02/reducing-environmental-social-costs-chinese-investments-pakistan/https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/1/22/resolving-the-baloch-issue-is-in-pakistans-political-and-economic-interesthttps://thediplomat.com/2016/08/balochistan-and-the-killing-of-akbar-bugti-10-years-later/Sheraz also shared some books at the end of our episode listed here:The Baloch National Struggle in Pakistan: Emergence and Dimensions by Jan Muhammad DashtiBalochistan: At a Crossroads by William Merck

This week's episode of Dab consists of Los, Doggy, Shod, Kutt & Sam. Today they discuss they Chief's coat created by Sheraz, Rap Sh!t cancellation, crazy high stories, Hip Hop's influence + more! Strain of the week: Kansas City Kush [Indica]

A Brisbane businessman who part owns Soulcombe and Sheraz, played a part in his friend collecting a small fortune in the Melb Cup F4. Craig Sneesby says he was proud of both horses, but didn't get the big dividend himself.

Authorities on backing slow horses, enthusiasts of spinning yarns.This podcast we interview big dog owner Craig Sneesby. Craig owns some of the best talent in Australia right now, including Selino, Sheraz, Hoo Ya Mal, Zougotcha and Melbourne Cup hopeful Soulcombe. We talk about the highs and lows of ownership, and the state of affairs with the industry at present. It's a ripping yarn.On The Drift, the self acclaimed biggest horse racing podcast on the Northside of Brisbane. We preview and review the Group 1 races across the Australian Thoroughbred Racing calendar, while providing best bets each week. We'll have a light hearted look at the racing industry, talking about topics that racing ethusiasts are interested in. If you're having a bet this Spring, take it to the Neds level: www.neds.com.au Join us on Instagram, Twitter & Tiktok.Thanks for listening

Tracey and Sheraz discuss bank earnings, tech, and the underdog energy sector.  (1:00) - What Can Earnings Tell Us About The Banking Industry  (9:15) - What Sectors Are Having The Biggest Issues Right Now? (15:30) - What Is Driving The Growth In Consumer Discretionary Sector? (19:00) - Manufacturing Recession: Can We Expect A Rebound Anytime Soon? (21:40) - What Should Investors Expect From AI and Energy Companies? (25:00) - Episode Roundup: BAC, JPM, C, CMA, FRC, META, TOL, XOM, CVX Podcast@Zacks.com

Amid extreme weather events, many grape growers ask themselves what they can do to adapt their vineyard for climate change. Chris Chen, Integrated Vineyard Systems Advisor in Sonoma, Mendocino, and Lake Counties at the University of California Cooperative Extension is exploring solutions to this question. Mediterranean climates like California, with hot and dry summers and cold wet winters, are particularly sensitive. Researchers expect temperature maximums will be higher and the minims will be lower in years to come. Chris explains a few tactics growers can use to continue farming successfully amid climate changes including rootstocks, canopy management, new scions, and most importantly trialing. References: REGISTER: 3/10/23 Canopy Management: Trellising, Sunburn, & Mechanization Tailgate Meeting | Paso Robles, CA 67: Impacts of Climate Change on Wine Production A New World of Wine: How the Viticultural Map is Changing | Greg Jones | International Masters of Wine Symposium (Video) Andy Walker, Emeritus Louise Rossi Endowed Chair in Viticulture and Enology Chen Lab Chris Chen Twitter Climate, Grapes, and Wine | Greg Jones | TEDx Roseburg (Video) Out of Sync: Vine Responses to Changing Conditions SIP Certified UCCE North Coast Viticulture UCCE Sonoma County Viticulture UCCE Viticulture Newsletters Online - North Coast Vineyard Team – Become a Member Get More Subscribe wherever you listen so you never miss an episode on the latest science and research with the Sustainable Winegrowing Podcast. Since 1994, Vineyard Team has been your resource for workshops and field demonstrations, research, and events dedicated to the stewardship of our natural resources. Learn more at www.vineyardteam.org.   Transcript Craig Macmillan  0:00  My guest today is Chris Chen. He's integrated vineyard systems advisor for Sonoma Mendocino and Lake counties with the University of California Cooperative Extension. And I think we're gonna have a very interesting conversation today, Chris has done some pretty interesting work and some pretty interesting ideas. So welcome to the podcast, Chris.   Chris Chen  0:14  Thanks, Craig. Appreciate it. Looking forward to it.   Craig Macmillan  0:16  Doing a little bit of background on you. Would you say that there's a particular thread or what the thread is that runs through your research and extension work? Because it seems like there is one to me.   Chris Chen  0:25  A lot of my work is focused on adaptation to climate change and vineyards. And it's something that goes back to when I was in grad school, you know, the, the whole climate change thing became really big and something to focus on when I entered grad school. And as I went through grad school, it became what I did. The thread here is kind of how do we adapt viticulture, to changing climates? How do we predict what a climate today is going to be in 510 years, the thread is to see how can we adapt to these changing conditions, and still keep viticulture, thriving and successful.   Craig Macmillan  0:57  What is the prediction right now, in terms of let's start with California, but we can talk about the West Coast, we can also talk about New York, and we can talk about Europe. But you work in California, what is the current picture in terms of long term climate change that might affect grapes?   Unknown Speaker  1:15  It's not really easy to say this will happen that will happen. But what we expect to see in California, it's a Mediterranean climate right now, these are very sensitive climate types, typically classified as regions with really hot, dry summers, cold, wet winters, right. And they're kind of fringe ecosystems, fringe climates. So they're on the border of, of an inland climate in a coastal climate, that means they're the most sensitive to climate change. So what we're expecting to see in California, and what a lot of researchers, climate researchers are planning on is, you know, increased temperatures, the maximums are going to be higher, the minimums are going to be lower, and those swings are going to be more drastic in between. So the diurnal temperature shift is going to be huge. You know, that is something that everyone kind of expects with climate change. It gets hotter, it gets colder, the extremes are more extreme, but what we're not really sure about is how precipitation is going to change. And in California, rainfall is such a huge thing. It's variable year to year, we have droughts for three years at a time and then one relief year, what we're really confused about is how is the rain pattern gonna change where we are today are we going to get the same rainfall and we're going to be able to support viticulture here anymore?   Craig Macmillan  2:33  Now that brings up an interesting question. I'm going to bring up Andy Walker here, Dr. Andy Walker, the very famous plant breeder and I attended a seminar that he did on rootstocks, which he's done a ton of work and many rootstocks are out as a result of his lab. And he started off the whole thing by saying, you can dry farm winegrapes anywhere in the world. And the room just went silent, like I don't think anybody was breathing. And then he says, Now you might get two clusters, providing but the plant itself is going to do what it does. It's an amazing plant. It's incredible. And then he went on and talked about being in the Andes and seeing things in different parts of the world. And I found that really inspiring because when we talk about what we're doing right now, water, obviously is probably the biggest knob. If you have all these knobs, you can twist fertilizer, whatever water is probably the biggest one. Yeah, California, you have done some work with a number of people, but also with Kaan Kutural who I love on drought tolerance, drought resistance, I would say and what kinds of things? Are you finding out what you mean? Where is it kind of leading you? Where is it? What's kind of the thought process?   Chris Chen  3:38  Andy, he was also my doctoral advisor. So I've heard his Spiel once or twice about dry farming. You know, you can do that can grow grapes in most almost all places without water there. There are grapes on islands that are irrigated with fog drip, so it's possible, but he's also right in saying that you're not going to get the yields that make you profitable. So that's concerning. And what we want to avoid, because we still need a certain tonnes per acre to reach profit margin that matters in terms of what can we do and how we're going for drought adaptation. There's the old approach of using rootstocks. And it's a very useful approach, right, these rootstocks from Andy Walker's perspective, and if you're looking at it from his lens, they have different rooting patterns. They have different water demands, and that translates to what we're growing on top. Whether it's Cab, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, whatever you want to grow on top of it, it's going to be impacted by what it's grafted to that is actually a very reasonable strategy to address drought that has its limits, you know, you still need water to grow grapes. Almost all grape vines in the wild, are only found near perennial water sources. So it's not like we can get rid of water altogether. We can't just leave them alone and expect to have any crop on them. But there's other things we can do. One of the huge management strategies that we can look at is canopy management. So canopy management in vineyards have really impacts how much water transpires and how much water evaporates from the surface of the soil. With a bigger canopy, you get less evaporation. But you also get more transpiration because there's more leaves, right. And vice versa. If you have a small canopy, you have the opposite problem that actually really impacts your fruit, your crop load, you know the quality of your fruit, the characteristics of the berries. So it's not something that everybody's going to play around with, because they want us to in the end, they want a certain kind of fruit with certain characteristics for their winery. But canopy management is a huge one as well, as rootstocks, there's also the interest in precision agriculture. So there is the spoon feeding approach where instead of irrigating large quantities at once, we can irrigate small portions at a time.   Craig Macmillan  5:43  Irrigate strategicly. I mean, I've seen some pretty interesting work from the past where it was like a 10, Vine irrigation block. And you were able to control this and that little bit in that little bit. And you could use NDVI to figure out where you want to do it. Interesting work. I'd never was convinced how practical that might be for most growers, especially if you're retrofitting their orchards.   Chris Chen  6:05  In Australia that irrigate on a tree to tree basis. So it's very doable. You know, the question is, how much water would you actually save doing that? And how much energy are you using to pump that every time?   Craig Macmillan  6:18  Exactly. Now, we're talking about rootstocks rootstock breeding back in the day, 100 years ago, or whenever it was all about phylloxera. And it was about salt. I know that Dr. Walker has done a lot of work on salt resistance. n=Nematode resistance is turned out to be a big one. If I remember that's the GRM series are specifically for nematode. Is that right?   Chris Chen  6:38  Correct. Yes. Those are anti Walker's.   Craig Macmillan  6:40  Crowning achievements. Brilliant stuff. You know, we're talking about genetic differences and rootstocks that have been bred for different conditions, including things like drought tolerance. What about what's on top, you make a point one of your articles that the landscape of wine growing is dominated by Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay, which means we have a very limited genome, essentially, of what's above ground. And we've learned from other crops that might not be such a great idea. We're talking about maybe trying to rootstock our way out of some of this. Can we variety, some of our way out of this.   Chris Chen  7:11  So the short answer to that is yes. The long answer is a bit more complex. You know, overall, all of the scions we put on are all one species Vitus vinifera, there's a few others like Vitesse labrusca, which is Concorde. And there's a there's a couple others that we use, but the majority of what we consider winegrapes is Vitus vinifera. So the genetic differences in the scions are not huge. The real differences are in the phenotyping. Right, you look at a Cabernet Sauvignon vine. And you compare that to a Tempranillo or Zinfandel, you'll see that the latter, they actually have quite larger canopies, even though they're the same species. The weird thing is they're more heat tolerant. Part of that might be their transpiration and might be for several reasons, these small changes in how they look change how they interact with their environment. So the real concern in you know, changing the scions from place to place site to site is that some places actually have latched on to a variety or two. If you think about Napa Napa, you think Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon, where I work in the north coast, it's Pinot Noir, a little bit of Chardonnay, some Sauvignon Blanc and Lake County, right? It's very possible to say, you know, if we have a one, one site that increases temperatures by, you know, temperature accumulation by 20%, in 10 years, it might behoove them to go from a cold climate grapes like Pinot Noir and switch over to something like Zinfandel. The problem is, well, the market that purchases their wine actually still keep buying their wines. If they go to Zinfandel, it would be a smart move. If you're thinking about, you know, the physiology of the plant of the difficulty of managing the vineyard, all the extra things you have to do if you want to stick with that cold climate grew up in a hot climate, not to say that people don't do that we do have Pinot Noir grown in San Joaquin Valley, for instance, just not as much as up here. So it's possible one of the problems is actually picking those varieties, picking the right varieties because just because it gets hotter here doesn't mean you know, Santa Rosa has the same climate as Bakersfield. There's differences in humidity and light incidents. There's differences in just cultural practices, what people do to manage the soils what they do for fertilizing. So overall, yeah, it's possible but there's other barriers besides just switching the plant.   Craig Macmillan  9:29  It sounds like some of those barriers are the ability to make accurate predictions about what might happen if I'm planting Zinfandel in an area where it's never really had Zinfandel. I don't know exactly what's gonna go on. But then also it sounds like acceptance of the marketplace is gonna play a big role. That's that's a different conversation. Unless you have a feeling about it. I think part of what goes on is we do have information from the marketplace. We do have research, but a lot of what goes on here is growers themselves as individuals are making decisions out what's gonna happen? Right? It's not necessarily that we're getting handed down this necessarily the trend, but like, I think this is where we're gonna go. When you talk to people about this kind of thing. What kind of response do you get from growers?   Chris Chen  10:10  Yeah, you know, it depends. There are growers that are all about trying new cultivars, and they usually inhabit kind of niche markets, a lot of these growers will grow varieties that are useful for blending. So if you need some more color, if you need some more acids, they'll grow these varieties that impart that to wines that otherwise wouldn't have them. And you know, there's only so much of a market for that. I think there's also growers on the other side where they say, Well, no, in order for us to make our ends meet, we have to stick with so and so variety, we have to stay with Pinot Noir because our entire consumer base wants it. And you know, there's trends in viticulture in California as a whole that have followed these, you know, this chain of events Muscats Muscats, used to be very popular along with making a rose out of Zinfandel. Riesling was another one, people planted a bunch of these things, and then the consumer market dropped out. And they were stuck with fines that take, you know, five years to hit any kind of good crop. And within those five years, it fell out of favor. So they're selling their grapes for pennies, compared to what they would have been if had they had them at the peak of the popularity, we can't change our varieties just based on popularity, and we can't keep them just based on popularity. But there are these constants right 40% of the grapes planted in California are Cabernet Sauvignon Chardonnay, which is not a bad thing. It just means that people want it.   Craig Macmillan  11:31  use the term asynchronous or asynchrony, and viticulture. What What do you mean when you refer to that?   Chris Chen  11:37  so that's a term that I thought would be very applicable to the situation. So vineyards as a whole run on a schedule, they run on timing, and part of that is their biological timing, right? So their biological timing is based off of heat accumulation. So the hotter it is for the longer the quicker we have budbreak, the quicker we have chute growth and fruit set, and so on. So that as the climates are changing, and we know we're going to see higher temperatures in some places, then we're seeing a shift in that timing. And a shift in that timing changes a lot of things, it changes how the plants interact with insects and pests and beneficial insects, because they're also changing their timing, we're seeing, you know, some insect pests are increasing their generations. So they instead of two generations a year, they'll have three in some really hot places, for instance. But also these these beneficial insects that control the pests are switching their timing of hatching and switching their timing of maturity. And we're seeing that more and more, and we're afraid we're gonna start seeing that in agriculture relatively soon. So what all of that together means is that when you look at a vineyard, the events that you would have had for the past 100 years are not happening at the same times as they would have been in the next 10 years than they did previously. And that's a challenge actually, for you know, management as well, because labor resources are, especially in agriculture are often you know, made more available during timeframes where they're needed. And if that timeframe changes, there's gonna be a year or two where that's a problem.   Craig Macmillan  13:09  If we don't change anything, let's say we don't change varieties, we don't change the root stocks or anything, I'll get vineyards that are 10 years old now and hopefully get another decade or two out of it, or I'm making decisions 20 years from now for a variety like Cabernet Sauvignon you're in and we will talk about Pinot Noir as well that I think that's an important one. But I want to start with Cab, in your experience, let's say things get warmer and colder. And then we don't know what's going to happen with weather. So let's just leave rainfall out of it for now. But just the swings in the higher the highs and lower lows, what impact do you think that's gonna have on wine quality or yield? How are these things going to change? Do you think as a viticulturalist?   Chris Chen  13:45  Especially wine grapes really need that big swing in temperature, so they need that diurnal shift that's really hot summer days and really cold summer nights. That really helps them develop their flavonol profiles, their tannins, their anthocyanins, anthocyanins more so about, light, you know, incidents light exposure, but that's beside the point. So it's actually kind of a good thing. The problem is when we hit these limits, right? So when we hit these limits of it's too hot. So now instead of accumulation of these compounds, what we're seeing is a degradation of them. So they're accumulating in the grapes faster throughout the year. So again, this is that asynchrony, right. So as you get closer toward the traditional historic harvest time, you think, okay, these grapes are still accumulating their tannins, or they're still accumulating their flavonols or their their anthocyanins are not degrading it. But what we're seeing is that increase in the growing degree days or heat accumulation is actually decreasing the amount of stable compounds in the grape that we want. So we're seeing especially with color, we're seeing a degradation in color. anthocyanins are degrading, much sooner and to higher degrees in these really hot summers, especially when We have these heat waves that we had last year. These heat waves are terrible for these things. But we don't know which varieties are going to be tolerant to this and can can withstand these changes in extremes. So the increases in high temperatures, the decreases in low temperatures, the low temperatures aren't really a problem unless we get freezing temperatures which we shouldn't in summer, but it's not impossible.   Craig Macmillan  15:23  Not impossible could happen. What about Pinot Noir, famously very sensitive, very narrow range that it likes. Right. I got you on the spot here.   Chris Chen  15:32  Yeah, I can't speak to that too much. Because all of the trials that I've done and I've seen have been with Cabernet Sauvignon, one of the most popular red varieties in the world, I can't say that it's more or less sensitive to these changes Pinot Noir. But based on its classification, as a region, one region two cold climate grape, it's likely to be more sensitive to these extreme highs in summer and degrade faster. We do know that Pinot Noir ripens sooner than Cabernet Sauvignon does, on average, you know, put them in the same spot and your Pinot is going to be done. I don't know spitballing number here two weeks before the Cabernet is so you harvest the two weeks ahead of time. That means if you're harvesting it at the same time as Cabernet, you're getting more degradation in those anthocyanin. So that would be the theory behind why Pinot Noir might be more affected by these high temperatures. But I don't have anything to cite for you at the moment.   Craig Macmillan  16:25  Sure, sure. But I think that your insight there is useful in that. Okay, maybe we don't know what's gonna happen. We can kind of guess at some things that might happen. But if we know kind of where things might end up, or how the vine might repond, I might change my winemaking, I might change my canopy management style, right? I knew a guy who was an old school farmer, and he refused to put in drip irrigation even in new vineyards. And I asked him about it. And he said salts, that's the way to go. That's it only way to do it. And I was like, well, that's 1974 It's not 1974 anymore. And he goes looks listen in the middle of a day, it's 105 I can turn on those sprinklers. And I can cool that canopy and I can avoid stress. I said we're gonna overwater, you're gonna do it, because you just gotta know what you're doing son, like just, I can put it out there. And I can manage this a more effective tool for me. I watched him over the years and saw what he did. He had it really dialed in. But he had a totally different approach to what tool he wanted to use to deal with whatever the environmental condition was. And I thought that was really interesting and very clever. Are there things that we can learn from other parts of the world? Because obviously, there's differences in climate different places to Australia, you know, very different interestes and very warm areas there, if I understand correctly, are we gaining knowledge, we gained some guidance from other parts of the world on this topic?   Chris Chen  17:42  If we're not we should be there's this popular topic that England United Kingdom can grow grapes now, and they can grow good grapes now. And that's new. That never used to be the case. And you know the story of I don't know if this is true. But the story of why Brut champagne or Brut sparkling wines called Brut is because the French made it for the English and they didn't like them. No, I mean, we do have things to learn. Yeah, we do have things to learn from other people, especially places that are really hot. South Africa, Australia, these, you know, these locations are, a lot of them are dealing with conditions that, you know, we see here as well, but they're dealing with it on a much larger scale. So we see, you know, really hot temperatures in the San Joaquin Valley, Sacramento Valley. But we grow grapes there. And we're good at it. You know, in Australia, that's a huge swath of land that's in those kinds of conditions. But then the one where it gets really sensitive is when we get to the coast when we get to colder climates, like where I work where I operate. So it's going to be, you know, the coastal regions that really are impacted more, because they don't have the infrastructure, they don't have the cultivars to really tolerate that heat. And what we need to do is look at places that are experiencing this change before we're experiencing it. And often these are Mediterranean climates, also, right, New Zealand, Australia, South America, Chile, and see what they're doing, see how they're adapting to it and what cultivars they're planting. You know, I'm not saying that all of Mendocino County should be planting Sheraz or Sahra. But you know, it might be good for some growers to try it out and see what's going on. I've been advocating for a lot of growers that, you know, if you're replanting, and vineyard, plant a few other cultivars somewhere and just see how they do, you know, it's not really great for if you're harvesting with the machine, because you end up knocking those into the same bin as all the other grapes. But if you could, you know, find an area where it's isolated and far enough away that you're not going to mix them up might be good to plant five, five to 10 vines of something else and see how it does because each each region is going to be different. Each region is going to have to have a different response because climate change is very regional.   Craig Macmillan  19:53  But the good news is that we are pretty clever. As an industry we've come up with all kinds of solutions to all kinds of problems over the years. without the folks like you have made that possible. We're running out of time. But I want to ask you one very simple and very short question. And that is based on everything that we've kind of talked about what one piece of advice or what one takeaway would you give a grape grower?   Chris Chen  20:16  I would say the most important thing is to do really good monitoring practices to really get out there and see how your vines are changing, and how your site is changing. You can you can try new cultivars, you can try, you know, different root stocks, you can try different canopy management practices. But if you don't keep track of how things are changing in response to that, then there's no point, right? There's a lot of really good tools out there. There's a lot of new things coming out that you can you can, you know, remotely sense and identify diseases, changes in stomatal conductance in different physiological measurements that are really important to developing a grapevine. Just look at these new monitoring solutions. Be wary of ones that may or may not work, you know, don't don't put all of your your eggs in one basket, that kind of thing. But get out there and monitor.   Craig Macmillan  21:06  I think that's great advice. And I think that applies to a lot of things. Where can people find out more about you?   Chris Chen  21:10  I have a website. If you go to Google, and you type in UC AND Chris Chen, it should bring up my bio, and there's a link to my lab page there, has a bunch of resources has a bunch of links and papers. And I think you know, especially if you're in the North Coast region and the counties I work in, you can just give me a call. You know, most people can just call me anyways, I work for University of California. So it's, you know, quasi public domain. Yeah, please feel free to reach out.   Craig Macmillan  21:38  Fantastic. So our guest today has been Chris Chen. He's an integrated vineyard systems advisor for Sonoma, Mendocino and Lake counties with the University of California Cooperative Extension. Thanks for being on the podcast. Chris. This is really fun.   Chris Chen  21:50  Thanks for having me. Craig. Enjoyed it.   Transcribed by https://otter.ai

In this episode, Prof Sheraz Marker reflects on his academic and clinical progression and some of the challenges of balancing this with the pressure  of a young family. Sheraz discusses the support and progression available from working with the EAES research committee for the past 7 years. Stefania Marconi shares her research on environmental sustainability in the medical sector from her perspective a biomedical engineer. Stefania reflects on the inspiration she draws from talking and working with surgeons from across the EAES family. This episode is sponsored by Olympus

Sammy @WhatTheTrigMath chats to Sheraz. Sheraz is an ESOL and FS maths teacher in FE. Sheraz shares his action research on mentoring and how by co creating experiences a more positive metnoring relationship can occur. "When it comes to TLA we usually talk at length and do some CPD, but actually the real TLA happens inside the classroom" It's a great listen! You can connect with Sheraz on Twitter!

Tracey and Sheraz discuss the trends in Q1 earnings season including the financials and red-hot energy. (0:45) - What Are The Current Trends This Earnings Season? (5:15) - Have Stock Analysts Been Too Conservative With Estimates? (11:20) - Will The Banks Make A Run With Higher Interest Rates?(17:05) - Breaking Down The Strong Earnings For Energy (22:35) - Episode Roundup: WTFC, PNC, JPM, PXD, OXY, CVX, XOM Podcast@Zacks.com

This week, Dr. Jason Powers and Julie DeNofa are joined by Sheraz Hassanein, Admissions Assistant at Positive Recovery Centers.    Sheraz is an undergraduate student at the University of Alberta, graduating this year with a BA in Psychology and Sociology. She hopes to continue working in this field and pursue a Master's in counseling/clinical psychology this fall. A few interesting facts about Sheraz is that she was born in Egypt but raised in Canada and can speak three different languages. She is also passionate about traveling and loves learning new things.   In this conversation, Dr. Powers, Julie, and Sheraz discuss the power of positive psychology and how to apply positive interventions to your own recovery journey. They also discuss the gift of helping others flourish through recovery and what it's like starting a brand new life worth living for.     Topics Discussed: Living life with authenticity and intentionality  Embracing change and the beauty of growth Helping others feel seen by acknowledging their strengths Being aware of others' thoughts and feelings   Connect with Sheraz Hassanein:   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sherazhs/  Twitter: https://twitter.com/sheraz_hs Connect with Positive Recovery MD Podcast:   Website: https://www.positiverecoverymd.com  Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/577870242872032  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4JcDF1gjlYch4V4iBbCgZg    Connect with Positive Recovery Centers Online:   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/positiverecoverycenters/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PositiveRecoveryCenters/  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/positiverecoverycenters/ Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/positiverecoverycenters/    Contact Positive Recovery Centers:   If you or someone you know needs help, visit the website, or call the number below to schedule an assessment. We are here to help.    Call: 877-476-2743 Address: 902 West Alabama Street Houston, Texas 77006 Website: https://positiverecovery.com  Services: https://positiverecovery.com/services/  FAQ: https://positiverecovery.com/faq/  ---  About Positive Recovery MD Podcast:   The Positive Recovery MD podcast is hosted by Dr. Jason Powers, Addiction Medicine Specialist and creator of Positive Recovery.    This podcast will not only inspire and motivate its listeners, but it will also provide the tools and foundation needed to thrive and flourish on their addiction recovery journey. Each week the Positive Recovery MD podcast community will come together to have authentic conversations around addiction, Recovery, and what matters – growth & progress, not perfection, all while developing positive habits for your life.    To join the community, visit https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/OtK48nO/dailypositiverecovery to sign up to receive the daily Positive Intervention that we'll review and gain access to EXCLUSIVE Positive Recovery content available only to Positive Recovery MD listeners.   About Positive Recovery Centers:   Positive Recovery Centers is a strengths-based addiction treatment program with locations across Texas. We offer a full continuum of care, from medical detox to sober living, all supported by an ever-growing alumni community network.    Our evidence-based curriculum blends the best of the old with the new, supporting our mission: that Recovery is best pursued when meaningful, intentional positive habits are formed through empowerment and resilience instead of negativity and shame.     What is Positive Recovery?   Empathy and compassion drive our mission. Positive Recovery uses strengths as a pathway to help others flourish in Recovery at work, and at home; this is our core purpose, our “Why.” We creatively apply science to improve outcomes. Positive Recovery is not wishful thinking; it is not a magic pill, nor self-help.    Positive Recovery is an evidence-based addiction curriculum that links the best of the old with the new, integrating existing practical approaches to treatment with interventions that enhance well-being by cultivating its components: positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, and achievement.

In this special Payments episode of the Solana Podcast, Austin Federa guest hosts a conversation between Jeremy Allaire (CEO, Circle) and Sheraz Shere (Head of Payments, Solana Labs). They discuss merchant payments, stablecoins and Solana Pay: the newly released, open, and free-to-use payments framework built on Solana.00:45 - What is Circle?03:35 -  The use case for stablecoins and the mechanisms to build them09:34 - Solana Pay13:42 - Integration of USDC and Stable Coins18:45 - How could Solana Pay become mainstream? 25:27 - The Solana Pay toolkit27:39 - Can businesses operate without a bank account?30:05 - Looking at Data Privacy in Solana Pay and Circle 34:35 - Hopes for Solana hackathon outcomes  Austin: (00:09)Hello and welcome to the Solana podcast. I'm Austin Federa guest hosting this week. Today we're going to be talking about stablecoins, USDC and Solana pay. So we're joined today by Sheraz Shere, the head of payments at Solana labs and Jeremy Allaire, the CEO of Circle. Welcome to the show.Jeremy: (00:27)Thank you.Sheraz: (00:27)Thanks Austin.Austin: (00:28)Great. Well, let's start off with Jeremy, talk a little bit about Circle. Can you tell us a little bit about what is Circle and what's its role in the US DC stablecoin?Jeremy: (00:37)Sure, absolutely. So Circle is a global financial technology firm. We operate a suite of services to help businesses take advantage of digital currency in payments and treasury applications on the internet, which is all really a mouthful. But specifically we have a couple of really critical things. The first is we operate a stablecoin market infrastructure as we call it called USDC, and we'll talk, I know more about that, but USDC is a dollar digital currency that is an asset backed or fully reserved digital currency that can be used for payments and settlement on the internet. And it's already used really, really widely in the crypto economy.And so we run that infrastructure and provide that to businesses institutions, and through many, many of our partners out to tens or perhaps even hundreds of millions of end users that interact with USDC. And then we also operate a suite of services for companies to have payments and treasury management and other things that are needed to integrate this into the way that they operate. So almost like a crypto native bank account for businesses to store and transact, and then alongside that a broad set of API products.So basically Circle APIs that connect the existing fiat system, credit cards, bank accounts, bank transfers with stablecoins, with the custody, security, blockchain management, and other things that are needed to use that and integrate that into your own application. So lots and lots of fintechs, startups, companies like building on those APIs to kind of integrate stablecoins and fiat in their applications. So hundreds of companies use those and those are the key things that we do. And we've been growing with other products in what we call to treasury services. So Circle yield, which is a stablecoin yield product, which has been growing really fast too.Austin: (02:50)Yeah. I want to get into that kind of in a minute. So stablecoins, they're foundational to a lot of how DeFi has been enabled over the years. So there's lots of different applications for that. Sometimes it's just as a common transacting layer between multiple currencies. There's lots of different applications for it, but as you mentioned, there's more and more sort of enterprises and traditional companies, as well as fintechs that are in that space that are looking to use stablecoins in their business operations. At the same time, you have a bunch of DeFi Degens who are sort of the original core audience for a stablecoin. What does that decision making process look like at Circle when you're trying to balance such a diverse user base?Jeremy: (03:33)Yeah, it's a great question. And sometimes I'm asked "What's the use case for USDC," and my answer is sort of "What's the use case for a dollar?" Well, the use cases are incredibly broad, and we see that actually today, we see people who are making personal point to point payments internationally. We see people making micropayments for digital IP through NFTs, and at the other end you see institutions that are using USDC to settle half a billion dollar bilateral trades. And that's a pretty broad range of use cases that are out there. I think more importantly, conceptually when we built USDC and you can go back and read the original white paper behind it. And the idea of fiat backed digital currencies, our ultimate belief is that what's needed is a sort of protocol layer for traditional money on the internet.So you can have dollars and euros and pounds and yen and other currencies that just function on top of the internet, the same way that other protocols support the exchange of information and communications. And if we had that, and we could use those protocols at the speed of the internet with the cost efficiency of moving data, which is what I think blockchains hold that promise, Solana's executing really well on that, but hold that promise, that it could really unlock the storage of transmission of value to be a kind of commodity free service on the internet. And so ultimately our belief is that anything that any person or household or firm might need to do in the digital economy on the internet could be done with stablecoins.And so we definitely expect that to grow. Now, when we got started, it was anchored in what I call crypto capital markets. So it's anchored in market participants that, for all the work that they do and all the assets that they might be interacting with, they're all digital assets, and they all move at the speed of blockchains, whatever that is and the efficiency of that. And so they need their dollars to work the same way, and so that kind of gave demand for payment and settlement mediums that could kind of work at the speed of those markets and those blockchains. So, that was a good bootstrap use case, and that's really what brought a lot of this into existence. But now the way I like to describe it is stablecoins are both protocols and money formats. It's a protocol that works on top of a blockchain with assurance and security and finality settle a transaction, but it's also a particular representation of value of a dollar or a Euro or whatever it is, and protocols and kind of formats our network affects businesses.And so the more people who have that, the more valuable or more useful it becomes, and the more products and services that are plugged into a protocol, the more useful and in utility that exists. And so we're now seeing the spillover of the use cases go into everyday businesses more and more everyday businesses saying, "Wow, this is a very, very efficient medium. It's very inexpensive, it's very fast, it's secure. I know it's final and it works globally." So we're certainly seeing that pick up. And at Circle, as we think about use cases, we really believe that the acceptance of payments in a business context using digital currency like this is going to proliferate pretty significantly in the coming years, because it's got so many attributes that are superior to existing electronic payments methods.Austin: (07:12)Yeah. And so you touched on something that's really interesting, which I think everyone thinks of USDC as a protocol, but unlike most organizations that have launched a protocol, the underlying token of USDC is USDC. Its whole point is it does not fluctuate in value, it does not go up, not go down. It stays solid at an equivalent of one US dollar. But Circle, it obviously for-profit organization, what are the mechanisms there that actually allow you to run a business as an organization that has created USDC?Jeremy: (07:48)There are a lot of pieces. So the first is today USDC is approaching 50 billion in circulation, and Circle administers and reserves those assets. And so we generate income from that, from that $50 billion we generate income. And as that grows to be a hundred billion or 200 billion, we'll continue to generate income from that, and certainly in a rising rate environment, that's significant. The second is we run a whole set of, what we call transaction services and treasury services, and those are services that we charge fees for. So transaction services are taking traditional fiat payment methods, using our infrastructure to do blockchain, native, custody, and payments. And so those are kind of usage based and scale up kind of like a Stripe or equivalent type of transactional service.And then we also provide treasury services. So people who want to lend their USDC can lend their USDC in a self-service way through our platform, and get fixed term fixed rate returns on capital on USDC, and we generate a spread income from that as well. So we're building out this sort of suite of commercial services that are globally available increasingly, and that provide a lot of incremental value. So those are several buckets as well, that are really helping us scale our business.Austin: (09:14)So we were talking about transactional services. Again Sheraz, You have been intricately involved in building and launching the Solana pay protocol. Can you give us an overview of what that is, and how stablecoins are an important part of that system?Sheraz: (09:29)Sure. Yeah. So Solana pay is basically a new blockchain based merchant payment system. It's open, permissionless, and decentralized, and it's premised on enabling merchants to connect directly with consumers in a peer-to-peer fashion with no intermediaries. And it's really premised on the notion that merchants would accept stablecoin like USDC. Most merchants, unfortunately for crypto natives, don't really care that much crypto per se, they care about running their business. And that's why having stablecoins, US dollar denominated stablecoins are critical, because what this affords us is the ability to move digital assets at speed and cost of the internet, as Jeremy mentioned.So for Solana pay, what we're really trying to do is enable for merchants, things like instant settlement, near zero cost transaction processing, and something that's really important is the removal of intermediaries. If you think about it from a merchant perspective the most important thing a merchant does is collecting payments and engaging with their consumers with commerce, but there's a lot of friction tied to enabling payments of and commerce. And with friction comes intermediaries and with intermediaries come cost and the loss of control. So if there's one headline for Solana pay, it's really about giving power back to the merchant for the most important function, which they do.Austin: (10:48)So can you talk a little bit about that? Payments is obviously a many billion dollar industry globally. There's some big name that have reached some pretty astronomical valuations nowadays based off of providing credit card payment processing solutions and that sort of thing to e-commerce and non e-commerce business. What's the sort of difference of approach here? How would you compare something like Solana pay to a company maybe like Stripe?Sheraz: (11:15)Sure. Yeah. And Stripe, I would say that the removal of intermediaries doesn't mean that a lot of the traditional payments companies don't have a role to play. The actual act of moving a digital asset from a consumer to the end merchant, that's the piece where there isn't need to be a friction, right? So with the Solana blockchain and a stablecoin like USDC, the movement of digital currencies from a consumer's wallet to the merchant wallet should happen like an email going on the internet, it should happen instantly with no cost. However, once a merchant has accepted a USDC stablecoin or settled in a stablecoin, there's a lot of interesting services that are needed to be done that merchants typically don't want to necessarily do themselves. So setting up token accounts, doing treasury management, reconciliation, integrating into legacy bank accounts.So there's a lot of work in the core stack of post settlement of payments that traditional payment companies can be involved in. The protocol itself is just trying to simplify one component of payment processing, which is the most critical one, which is that the transfer of value between the consumer and the merchant. One of the interesting things that we're building on the spec is the ability to also have a bidirectional communication. The benefit of having a true peer-to-peer connection between a merchant and a consumer and not having an intermediary is that this allows the merchant to, for example, send digital assets back to the consumer. So what this could look like is something like, let's say you buy a new shoe, using this protocol the merchant can send you back an NFT of that shoe into your wallet, which you can now take into the metaverse. Just an example, but illustrating why the notion of a peer-to-peer, a true peer-to-peer interaction between a merchant and a consumer can open up a whole new set of new things.Austin: (13:09)So Jeremy, Sheraz was talking there about one of the pieces of the stack that Solana pay is trying to solve, that payment from a consumer directly to a merchant. You in Circle work with companies that have extremely complicated payment flows that are trying to bring USDC into. What are some of the areas that integration has been easy and straightforward for these companies, and what are some of the areas that are still challenges for enterprise adoption of USDC and stablecoins?Jeremy: (13:37)First of all, just to say, as you know, we're really excited to be supporting Solana pay. And we believe that the problem space here is a really critical one, and solving this problem of how to build a better connection between an end user and a business and building beyond just the underlying digital asset transfer and solving some of these problems is really, really critical. The way I would kind of answer the question is there's sort of the base layer of you've got a blockchain and you've got addresses and wallets and you've got this settlement finality mechanism of moving an asset like USDC as well. And that part is kind of fairly low level.Jeremy: (14:27)And so businesses that want to use this as a substitute for say, a card payment, they can implement that out with Circle APIs, they can take Circle APIs and they can automatically generate new addresses automatically for each payment. They can then track that payment to a given payee. And then they can collect that and store it in USDC, or they can sweep it out to their bank account through an automated API that pushes a wire or other things. So there's like critical kind of behind the scenes treasury kind of infrastructure that's there. The problem is most end users, they don't really necessarily know what all these things are. And so I think being able to introduce things like having metadata associated with a payment, such as what the price is, what the product ID is, any other kind of merchant information that would be needed to kind of tie that payment to a commerce transaction, to be able to have of follow on interactions that are associated with that payment.All these problems are I think really important and become things that people expect, whether it's through a traditional legacy payment mechanism, like handling something like "You sent me the wrong product I need a refund," is like the most common, or some loyalty mechanism that maybe is inducing me to want to use the payment instrument. And so how can I use a blockchain to provide that loyalty mechanism as an inducement as well, building a stronger connection between say the business and the user?And so I think the pain points are more that there's incremental value that's needed for both the end user and the merchant to kind of bring this to a point where it's a superior payment, medium to legacy payment rails. And so those are the kinds of things that we see, but certainly the getting started piece is there. There's so much low hanging fruit. And I think so Solana pay is a really good start at hitting some of the low hanging fruit and creating a way for wallet creators. And then folks like Circle on the other end to make this a little bit more seamless for all the parties.Sheraz: (16:41)I would say that if you're a developer, a founder, or even a legacy payments company, there is a tremendous amount of interesting stuff to build. We just kicked off a hackathon and we have a payments track in that. And as Jeremy mentioned, the protocol itself is pretty low level, it's pretty basic if you look at it, right, it's just a very simple... The most native transaction on a blockchain is moving value from one token account to another token account.And we've put some specifications around that to put in like transaction identifiers and things like that. The real innovation is really going to come thinking about what are the new features that can be built on top of this. Now some of this will look like traditional commerce things like offers and loyalty, but there's a whole new set of commerce related features and consumer value props that have yet to be discovered. And I think that's what's really interesting is that there are going to be new businesses built on top of these protocols that will leverage the power of the blockchain. Because this technology opens up, again a peer-to-peer connection between a merchant and a consumer, eliminates the need for intermediaries, and now it gives power back to the merchants. So both the customer relationship, the data, and power in terms of controlling costs.Austin: (18:00)Sort of to push on that little, payments has been the killer feature of blockchain since blockchain became a thing, but there's been no real successful blockchain payment systems that have really emerged. I think the closest is there are some exchanges where you can get a debit card that allows you to spend out of your exchange account, but that's still a custodial relationship with the exchanges holding your tokens. The places where USDC and other stablecoins have been really successful is not on the payments level as much as so far has been on that sort of collateralization level or within the DeFi space. So Sheraz what about both Solana pay or Solana is actually making this a useful place for payments to actually go mainstream?Sheraz: (18:48)So yeah, absolutely crypto payments have been tried before. I mean, it's been talked about ever since maybe the pizza example. The problem is the traditional approach to crypto payments have been settled with several problems. So the first of all is that merchants don't want to settle in volatile currencies, right? With some edge cases aside, most merchants say, "I want to settle in US dollars or something that is the equivalent of a US dollar." Second is that the blockchains in the past have taken minutes or longer to settle, and that just doesn't work when you're trying to complete a transaction right? On an e-commerce site every second, that delay is more card abandonment, so waiting minutes for a transaction to settle just doesn't work. And then blockchains, transaction fees that exceed the actual cost of the item that you're buying just doesn't work.So to alleviate all this intermediaries came in and said, "Okay, great, look, I'll remove some of this friction for you. I'll exchange the Bitcoin and settle with you in US dollars. Oh, and by the way, I'll take on some of the risk of settlement taking 10 minutes. I'll give you an instant authorization and I'll just settle with you 24 hours later, and I'll eliminate some of the fluctuations in network fees. And for all that trouble, I'll charge you 100 basis points." And then it starts to feel and look a lot like traditional payment systems where you've got an intermediary, there's a lot of friction and a lot of cost and an intermediary is saying like, "I'll simplify all that for you, and I'll charge you a hundred basis points. And by the way, I'm the intermediary between you and your end customer."And that's really, well from what I've seen, what the attempt at crypto payments have done. What's different now is a couple of things. So one is rise of stablecoins and specifically USDC as a US dollar backed stablecoin. And then the Solana blockchain technology that has the speed throughput and low cost that eliminates a lot of that friction. Right now you have instant settlement, you have costs measured infractions of a penny, and you have throughput. You're not dealing with congested blockchain networks.And then the other thing is we now have a growing interest in crypto, there's tens of millions of wallets out there. People are more and more kind of normies as we call them, I guess, are dabbling into crypto. And I think you're going to see two kind of mental models, right? One is I buy crypto for speculation and investments, but I think more and more people are going to realize like, "Oh, I can use this for transactions. There are transactional currencies that I can use that provide me utility." So I think there's the combination of all of these factors coming into place with these new technologies are kind of going to give crypto payments a new shot in the arm.Jeremy: (21:36)Yeah. And I would just add to that just at a high level, I think one thing to note is stablecoins and public blockchains have achieved an astounding amount as payment system. I mean, these are decentralized infrastructure, running globally, supporting literally trillions of dollars of transaction throughput, and supporting pretty material volumes that have grown, and including in a wide variety of payment use cases. And we see that all the time, the number of businesses that are just signing up for Circle accounts, because they want to use USDC as just a payment medium outside of the markets themselves. And so it's a pretty amazing achievement, and that's happened in a very short period of time. I think there's many, many thousands of products and services that have integrated USDC.It took like 50 years to get to like 10,000 issuers, which are people who have integrated the visa credentialing. And so the adoption of these standards is happening at a really fast rate, which ties into the other piece, which is there have been a number of things that have been really necessary. I think one has been regulatory clarity, people being comfortable that this form of dollar is as good as an ACH dollar or a credit card dollar in terms of its usefulness and its legal clarity. Businesses knowing that these are legitimate financial infrastructure that they can rely upon and build upon. The other's been, as we've talked about here already is just the reality of the economics, the unit cost of transaction, the speed of a transaction, and through platforms like Solana, we're seeing that be solved for.And so I think what we're seeing is many more businesses, large merchants, traditional digital wallet companies who have large installed bases of consumers who want to wire up these protocols. And I think it's not just that they want to wire them up because this is a way to pay businesses. They want to wire them up, because these are interoperability standards that make it possible for digital wallets everywhere to kind of share value with each other, which is kind of moving outside of walled gardens and into the open internet of value. And so we're seeing all those kind of combined with each other and those are all mutually reinforcing factors that will then I think have more and more businesses saying, "Why don't I just add this as a payment method?"Sheraz: (24:00)As Jeremy said, I think in payments more broadly, tremendous traction and use cases and international remittances B2B. My view is a little thinking more about specifically about like retail, consumer emergent payments. And I think there's this open question that I keep hearing is like, "Well, we can't use USDC to buy milk." Well, we ran a physical point of sale transaction using so Solana pay and purchased a gallon of milk. So we're happy to share the video of that, but wanted to demonstrate how simple it is to use this currency and set up a small mom and pop with our in-store web app.Jeremy: (24:40)I mean, it reminds me of when the web was taking off and it was like, "Well, you can't use the internet to do this, this and this." And people are just wiring this stuff up and it's going to become something that's just so extraordinarily common and every business will be... they'd be idiots not to take digital currency payments as an alternative to the things that they do now, just like they would've been crazy not to set up email accounts or let customers contact them through the web, or through an online forum or through a Facebook page or whatever. It's just, these are just going to be, you have to do this if you just want to be a native internet business.Austin: (25:15)Look, the Internet's great, but all I can buy on amazon.com is books, and I can do that at my local bookstore.Jeremy: (25:20)Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah.Sheraz: (25:22)That's right.Austin: (25:23)So Sheraz, when you're talking about this tool kit for Solana pay, what is actually live now, if someone is interested in actually setting this up for their business and enabling people to buy a gallon of milk with USDC, what's that toolkit look like, and how could they get started?Sheraz: (25:39)Sure. Yeah. We have a physical point of sale client, which is a simple web app. It's a very dead simple onboarding experience as well. We have an e-commerce SDK as well, so if you have your own website, the tooling is there to support both QR code payments and browser plugin. And we have a great set of partners that are working with us to both distribute these tools and help us build the future of this protocol and specification.We have integrations with a set of wallets, FTX, Phantom, and Slope and others on the way. You know, part of the goal of this is that this is the first at bat at the first inning. We've built some of these tools to provide some reference implementations and tooling for people to start building, but there's a whole roadmap of additional things that we want the community to build with us.Jeremy: (26:53)Yeah. And we're super excited at Circle to support this. And we see getting these kinds of standards adopted in more and more wallets, it's great to see. And I think we're hoping that standards and efforts like this can get adopted in many, many other kind of crypto native wallets and other digital wallets that are kind of coming online to support USDC payments.Austin: (27:15)So, Jeremy, with this sort of front end component where you can now receive payments and USDC via Solana pay there's a whole series of other tools you're talking about, whether it's deposit into accounts for merchants. How soon of a future do you think it's going to be possible for someone to run a business, and make payroll and accept payments without actually having a bank account?Jeremy: (27:39)I think we're getting really, really close to that. I think with a Circle account, we provide businesses with the ability to open an account, it's got multi-user support, and administration so you can have multiple employees or people in your finance department using it. It provides on chain payments across multiple blockchains, it provides legacy bank payments, so if you need to get money out into legacy bank accounts, you can do that. We have a pretty exciting roadmap for new things that we're going to build there, so that kind of interoperability with legacy payouts is important as well. And then you have the ability to take your working capital and put it into yield. And so as you collect payments and you have working capital, you can deploy that and generate high interest rates on your USDC.And so those are things that are there today, and there's obviously a lot more that can be built out there. We have a pretty exciting roadmap for things that we're building. We want really any crypto native business clearly to sort of make this their global financial account for their startup or their growth company, but more and more traditional companies as well, who are getting into this who want to use this as payments infrastructure, but then will tie it into some of their working capital management and treasury management.And then underneath that is like any developer that really has something they want to do custom, everything is just a platform. Everything's a set of APIs that you can build on. Developers can automate all the different rails. They can automate how they store and move funds. They can kind of control all of that in a very, very fine grain way. And so while there is like that self-service experience, but a lot of startups want to kind of do this unique to their business so they can automate more and more of it. So we think this year is going to be a year where these types of hybrid digital currency bank like products are really starting to take more and more hold.Austin: (29:33)Yeah. So, sort of along those similar lines, the existing payments rails and industry is one where a lot of it still runs on data collection and data marketing as a way to help subsidize the cost of running a lot of those rails, right? Whether it's American Express offers or whether it's something like a company that actually is tracking purchases that are made in-store and using that to do marketing through direct mail or other means. How does data privacy play in both with Solana pay and Circle, and how are those things part of your decision making framework?Sheraz: (30:08)I think one of the most important aspects of the whole notion of the peer-to-peer transaction and removal of intermediaries is that now when you're accepting as a merchant, accepting a payment through this per protocol you're not necessarily going through Google or Apple or MasterCard or Bank of America or some other intermediary, right? You have a direct connection with that consumer, and because of that you're not potentially losing data. You don't have third parties accumulating all of this data. And the beauty of this protocol is that it's open, so any merchant could take this. We're not pushing an end solution down anybody's throat, this is an open decentralized protocol. Any merchant could take this and build the equivalent of the Target Red Card system, which is a very popular solution that Target built or the Starbucks closed loop payment system.So I think the most important thing is that if merchants have control over commerce and the protocol is open and they can kind of craft on top of it, it gives them much more control over their data. We also have under development APIs as part of our core token program that can provide additional layers of data privacy. So we have a confidential token API that's under development. And there's a lot of technological solutions that can be built in to give either the consumer or the merchant more privacy, or whatever level of privacy they're interested in, but the key is they have control, they're building it in the way that suits their business needs.Jeremy: (31:41)One of the principal benefits of digital currency and stablecoins and public blockchains is the higher degrees of privacy and security that they afford. And I think that's something that people value and it's inherent in the architecture of these cryptographic forms of money and that's really key. And so we merely provide ways to interact with that infrastructure, and so we don't really stand in any specific data around users in that way. And even new technologies that we're working on in digital identity are designed to use cryptographic proof of identity, not pass around a whole bunch of PII. And that's going to be really critical as you start to marry digital identity with payments, with merchant behaviors. How can I, as a consumer present myself and prove to a business that I'm a legitimate individual that's been compliance checked, and make a payment to you without bleeding all my PII to you, and for me as a business to say, "No, I know this is not a drug trafficker or a terrorist or what have you that I'm transacting with," and have those settlements be fast and secure and final and private?So I think those are really, really important things. At the same time I think that the building blocks of crypto give us new tooling for incentivizing customer relationships in new ways. NFTs and commerce are really powerful, powerful phenomenon, which we're seeing early experiments in. But I think for businesses that want to entice customers to give them more information or have a more direct relationship and where that information exchange can be valued in some way, I think NFTs create a really interesting and powerful way to do that. And that's something that can be direct between the consumer and the business and not something that's, again, bleeding all that information and out to other networks that are repurposing that. And so I think there's a chance to rebuild customer loyalty, incentives, loyalty marketing, and secure privacy preserving payments in a way that's superior to what we have with existing electronic payment systems today.Sheraz: (33:58)Yeah. It's like being a founder or an entrepreneur in 2000, right? Think about all of the things that needed to be built then and were built. And we are just on the starting point of this. So I think it's an exciting time to be an innovator and a developer and a founder and an entrepreneur.Austin: (34:20)I love that vision for the future. So, one last question before I let both of you two go. Riptide, the Solana global hackathons going on right now, if there's one thing that you would love to see a team build coming out of this, what would it be? And Sheraz, we'll start with you.Sheraz: (34:38)Sure. I mean, there's a bunch. I think one thing that could be really interesting is what does buy now pay later on chain look like, right? So we have so many crypto users that are sitting on SOL, and other assets that they want to hold that right, they're hold all that. They don't want to use that for transactions. So how could we enable so someone to purchase from a merchant using Solana pay, over collateralize their SOL holding and just buy now pay never? Use your staking rewards to pay for the purchase, call it buy now pay never. That's one example, that one could be really interesting.Jeremy: (35:18)I think we're excited to be part of the hackathon and putting forward some of our APIs that can be worked in conjunction with Solana pay as well. And so, I mean, just generally, we'd be very interested in seeing people who are building wallet experiences that are geared towards payments, whether it's a P2P payment or a person-to-merchant payment in particular, but really building experiences that are optimized for that flow, as opposed to being a DeFi Degen, or trading. And so I think those kinds of products that combine person-to-business and person-to-person payment experiences that abstract away some of the complexity, and then do that around these standards, I think we're super, super excited about that. And we're obviously excited to see what comes out of the hackathon. We're investing in a lot of companies now, and so we'll be watching really closely, because this is a space that we'd love to be investing in as well.Austin: (36:20)Well, Jeremy Allaire CEO of Circle Sheraz Shere end of payments at Solana Labs, thanks for joining us today.Sheraz: (36:26)Thank you, Austin.Jeremy: (36:27)Thanks. 

Benny and Jules bask in the fallout from a brilliant day of racing from Flemington. Jules remains magnanimous despite the flack he copped for saying Incentivise was the clear top pick over Verry Elleegant in the group one. The boys analyse the non-performance of French invader Sheraz in the Bart Cummings, and Jules reckons he's got a Blackbooker from earlier in the day.

Sheraz and Terry discuss why stocks have enjoyed below-average follow through in the market after coming out with strong Q1 results. We grapple with the question of whether this behavior is indicative of market skepticism about the earnings outlook.

Nous recevons Sheraz Ahmed, Founder & Managing Partner chez STORM Partners. Dans ce 8ème épisode de notre nouvelle série de podcasts "Portraits", vous découvrirez le parcours de Sheraz les raisons pour lesquelles il a lancé STORM Partners sa mission et son quotidien ses objectifs sur les 12 prochains mois et un apprentissage unique. Si tu aimes ce podcast, n’hésite pas à t’abonner, le partager autour de toi et à nous mettre 5 étoiles sur Apple Podcasts! Pour retrouver les podcasts de La French Tech Suisse Romande, notamment Portraits et les formats longs que nous allons très prochainement diffuser, on se retrouve sur frenchtech.ch. Si tu es founder ou co-founder d’une startup tech, membre de la communauté de la French Tech Suisse et que tu souhaites participer à Portraits, contacte-nous sur frenchtech.ch également. Très bonne écoute! _____ Les podcasts de la French Tech Suisse Romande sont imaginés et réalisés par Raphael Grieco.

Als traumatisierte Teenager flüchteten sie ohne ihre Eltern in die Schweiz. Als «Unbegleitete minderjährige Asylsuchende» werden sie hier gefördert und gefordert. Wie funktioniert Integration? «Reporter» über eine Herausforderung für alle Beteiligten. Malyar aus Afghanistan lebte 2017 zusammen mit Yusef in einer Wohngruppe im Kanton Basel-Land. Keine einfache Konstellation: Der Eritreer fiel immer wieder negativ auf. Malyar kam im Frühling 2016 in die Schweiz, nachdem er als 15-Jähriger monatelang allein auf der Flucht war. Inzwischen fühlt er sich wohl hier, schreibt gute Noten in der Schule und hofft, damit eine Lehrstelle als Polymechaniker zu finden. «Ich sah schon viele Tote, flüchtete vor den Taliban und war vorwiegend zu Fuss mit wenig Essen und Trinken unterwegs. Nun möchte ich in der Schweiz meine Chance packen, um etwas aus meinem Leben zu machen», erzählt er. Das trifft auch auf seine Landsleute Shezhad und Sheraz zu. Die beiden Cousins wurden 14- und 17-jährig von ihren Eltern auf die Flucht geschickt und kamen nach einer Reise voller Gefahren 2015 in der Schweiz an. Inzwischen leben sie in einer eigenen Wohnung und werden unterstützt durch die Fürsorge. Obwohl sie gewillt sind, sich hierzulande zu integrieren, läuft es ihnen nicht immer rund. Reporter Hanspeter Bäni hat die unbegleiteten minderjährigen Asylsuchenden während drei Jahren mit der Kamera durch ihre Höhen und Tiefen begleitet.

Als traumatisierte Teenager flüchteten sie ohne ihre Eltern in die Schweiz. Als «Unbegleitete minderjährige Asylsuchende» werden sie hier gefördert und gefordert. Wie funktioniert Integration? «Reporter» über eine Herausforderung für alle Beteiligten. Malyar aus Afghanistan lebte 2017 zusammen mit Yusef in einer Wohngruppe im Kanton Basel-Land. Keine einfache Konstellation: Der Eritreer fiel immer wieder negativ auf. Malyar kam im Frühling 2016 in die Schweiz, nachdem er als 15-Jähriger monatelang allein auf der Flucht war. Inzwischen fühlt er sich wohl hier, schreibt gute Noten in der Schule und hofft, damit eine Lehrstelle als Polymechaniker zu finden. «Ich sah schon viele Tote, flüchtete vor den Taliban und war vorwiegend zu Fuss mit wenig Essen und Trinken unterwegs. Nun möchte ich in der Schweiz meine Chance packen, um etwas aus meinem Leben zu machen», erzählt er. Das trifft auch auf seine Landsleute Shezhad und Sheraz zu. Die beiden Cousins wurden 14- und 17-jährig von ihren Eltern auf die Flucht geschickt und kamen nach einer Reise voller Gefahren 2015 in der Schweiz an. Inzwischen leben sie in einer eigenen Wohnung und werden unterstützt durch die Fürsorge. Obwohl sie gewillt sind, sich hierzulande zu integrieren, läuft es ihnen nicht immer rund. Reporter Hanspeter Bäni hat die unbegleiteten minderjährigen Asylsuchenden während drei Jahren mit der Kamera durch ihre Höhen und Tiefen begleitet.

Als traumatisierte Teenager flüchteten sie ohne ihre Eltern in die Schweiz. Als «Unbegleitete minderjährige Asylsuchende» werden sie hier gefördert und gefordert. Wie funktioniert Integration? «Reporter» über eine Herausforderung für alle Beteiligten. Malyar aus Afghanistan lebte 2017 zusammen mit Yusef in einer Wohngruppe im Kanton Basel-Land. Keine einfache Konstellation: Der Eritreer fiel immer wieder negativ auf. Malyar kam im Frühling 2016 in die Schweiz, nachdem er als 15-Jähriger monatelang allein auf der Flucht war. Inzwischen fühlt er sich wohl hier, schreibt gute Noten in der Schule und hofft, damit eine Lehrstelle als Polymechaniker zu finden. «Ich sah schon viele Tote, flüchtete vor den Taliban und war vorwiegend zu Fuss mit wenig Essen und Trinken unterwegs. Nun möchte ich in der Schweiz meine Chance packen, um etwas aus meinem Leben zu machen», erzählt er. Das trifft auch auf seine Landsleute Shezhad und Sheraz zu. Die beiden Cousins wurden 14- und 17-jährig von ihren Eltern auf die Flucht geschickt und kamen nach einer Reise voller Gefahren 2015 in der Schweiz an. Inzwischen leben sie in einer eigenen Wohnung und werden unterstützt durch die Fürsorge. Obwohl sie gewillt sind, sich hierzulande zu integrieren, läuft es ihnen nicht immer rund. Reporter Hanspeter Bäni hat die unbegleiteten minderjährigen Asylsuchenden während drei Jahren mit der Kamera durch ihre Höhen und Tiefen begleitet.

Als traumatisierte Teenager flüchteten sie ohne ihre Eltern in die Schweiz. Als «Unbegleitete minderjährige Asylsuchende» werden sie hier gefördert und gefordert. Wie funktioniert Integration? «Reporter» über eine Herausforderung für alle Beteiligten. Malyar aus Afghanistan lebte 2017 zusammen mit Yusef in einer Wohngruppe im Kanton Basel-Land. Keine einfache Konstellation: Der Eritreer fiel immer wieder negativ auf. Malyar kam im Frühling 2016 in die Schweiz, nachdem er als 15-Jähriger monatelang allein auf der Flucht war. Inzwischen fühlt er sich wohl hier, schreibt gute Noten in der Schule und hofft, damit eine Lehrstelle als Polymechaniker zu finden. «Ich sah schon viele Tote, flüchtete vor den Taliban und war vorwiegend zu Fuss mit wenig Essen und Trinken unterwegs. Nun möchte ich in der Schweiz meine Chance packen, um etwas aus meinem Leben zu machen», erzählt er. Das trifft auch auf seine Landsleute Shezhad und Sheraz zu. Die beiden Cousins wurden 14- und 17-jährig von ihren Eltern auf die Flucht geschickt und kamen nach einer Reise voller Gefahren 2015 in der Schweiz an. Inzwischen leben sie in einer eigenen Wohnung und werden unterstützt durch die Fürsorge. Obwohl sie gewillt sind, sich hierzulande zu integrieren, läuft es ihnen nicht immer rund. Reporter Hanspeter Bäni hat die unbegleiteten minderjährigen Asylsuchenden während drei Jahren mit der Kamera durch ihre Höhen und Tiefen begleitet.

A great story gets into your head; niggles its way into your mind, and makes you feel like you actually lived in it. When you close the book, turn off the TV or leave the cinema, those characters, for a split-second, still hang out in your head. The thing you're feeling is goya- the suspension of disbelief caused by such good and immersive storytelling. In this episode we get to the origin of the word- it comes from Urdu, and seems to have been re-translated a few times over to get to where it is today. Sheraz Ali, an Urdu teacher at Manchester University, answers some of my questions about where it's come from. (I didn't have time to include all the beautiful Urdu poetry he read to me, but I'm so grateful he helped me understand the wider context of this word.) Then we chat to writer and broadcaster Danny Wallace, who lets me take a deep-dive into his world of storytelling. How does he create a sense of goya for his readers? Is it easier to provide it in books rather than any other media? What work inspired him? He very kindly gives some in-depth answers that reveal his own formula for story success. Well, it's an emotion about writing, so it makes sense to talk to an actual author, right?Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/getting-emotional. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this episode, Sheraz and I discuss things to keep in mind when starting a business. We also answer the most common questions people have when it comes to investing in Real-Estate.

On this week's episode we chat all about acne with special guest Dr Adil Sheraz! Dr Sheraz is an experienced Consultant Dermatologist, a spokesperson for the British Skin Foundation and an expert guest on TV shows like "Skin A&E" and "Dr Christian will see you now". Acne affects millions of people globally and not just teenagers! It can have a great impact on peoples lives. So join us as we talk diagnosis, causes, treatment, maskne, diet and much much more... https://www.bad.org.uk/shared/get-file.ashx?id=65&itemtype=document

Everybody sweats, but why? And at what point does sweating large amounts become a medical issue? In this episode, Dr Adil Sheraz answers all these questions, and provides his advice on how best to manage excessive sweating.

sbw.hvj.coach/episodes/sheraz

Over 100 days into the pandemic in the UK, Europe's largest local authority Birmingham City Council tells us about the changing role of its website, the importance of combining national and local data to proactively outreach to those in need, its ‘online book of memories', which is collecting experiences to mark this significant moment in the city's history, and explains that the council is keeping a close eye on the local lock down in Leicester. Transcript of recording here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lB6uizIk75DxUqtIdg0_dkZtzkRvEKfFv_-bV-nHFQA/edit?usp=sharing

Welcome back to TBOTA!  Today... Funny Phone Calls Stevie the cat interrupts my very professional intro to chat smack, then comedian Sheraz Yousaf and I talk Russian heartbreak, Lockdown gyms, Stand-up sets via Zoom, Street Fighter, The state of the theatre industry, helping China conquer the world and more!

On this episode Sheraz and Jr talk about all different aspects of marketing and a few tales from the past !! The StockSharks Podcasts are always free, if you’re interested in joining our group chats and becoming a member please visit: https://www.stocksharksalerts.com/user-account/become-a-member/   Link to our news site: https://www.stocksharksnews.com/     All podcast content is subject to the following Disclaimer: Romell and Jr III any sharks guest are not investment advisers. Listeners should always speak to licensed and certified financial advisers before acting on ANY topic, investment or stock or business discussed on the podcast.   This is not investment advice – The podcast is only for opinion and discussion purposes only.

On this episode Sheraz and Jr talk about their favourite investment books throughout the years. The StockSharks Podcasts are always free, if you’re interested in joining our group chats and becoming a member please visit: https://www.stocksharksalerts.com/user-account/become-a-member/   Link to our news site: https://www.stocksharksnews.com/     All podcast content is subject to the following Disclaimer: Romell and Jr III any sharks guest are not investment advisers. Listeners should always speak to licensed and certified financial advisers before acting on ANY topic, investment or stock or business discussed on the podcast.   This is not investment advice – The podcast is only for opinion and discussion purposes only.

On this episode Sheraz and Jr talk about Sheraz's previous experience in the Restaurant & Night Club Business. The StockSharks Podcasts are always free, if you’re interested in joining our group chats and becoming a member please visit: https://www.stocksharksalerts.com/user-account/become-a-member/   Link to our news site: https://www.stocksharksnews.com/     All podcast content is subject to the following Disclaimer: Romell and Jr III any sharks guest are not investment advisers. Listeners should always speak to licensed and certified financial advisers before acting on ANY topic, investment or stock or business discussed on the podcast.   This is not investment advice – The podcast is only for opinion and discussion purposes only.

On this episode Sheraz and Jr talk about working from home during the corona quarantine and the impact on both the stock and real estate markets from it.  The StockSharks Podcasts are always free, if you’re interested in joining our group chats and becoming a member please visit: https://www.stocksharksalerts.com/user-account/become-a-member/   Link to our news site: https://www.stocksharksnews.com/     All podcast content is subject to the following Disclaimer: Romell and Jr III any sharks guest are not investment advisers. Listeners should always speak to licensed and certified financial advisers before acting on ANY topic, investment or stock or business discussed on the podcast.   This is not investment advice – The podcast is only for opinion and discussion purposes only.

In Real Estate you are your own business you have to do what ever you can to market yourself. Sometimes agents may not have the funding to buy ads to get themselves out there but there are many different FREE ways to get yourself out there. In this Episode Kash-Wayne Campbell speaks with Sheraz Ali regarding different methods to market yourself. Follow Kashwayne Campbell on Instagram @iamkashwayne --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/kashwaynecampbell/message

In the first episode of Property talks, Adam sits down with Sheraz & Elliot. Sheraz is the founder of Credit Ladder, a new platform where for the first time ever, tenants can use rent payments to build their credit history. In this episode they discuss the platform, how to support tenants, changes coming to the letting market and how things have changed in technology in the last 10 years.

Episode 10 of #comafterhours is with comedian Sheraz Yousaf. Follow him on Twitter at @sherazcomedy.This episode was recorded at The Brewery, Romford on 3rd March 2018 as part of The Brewery Fringe Festival.George Vere is on social media at ripgeorgevere and his website is https://www.georgevere.com.

http://thecomedycast.com/ Hello and welcome back to The Comedy Cast; today you’ll be hearing from English comedian, Sheraz Yousaf. We get straight into comedy as Sheraz had recently played some roles in a theatre production so I wanted to know was character acting something he'd like to pursue as well as comedy. We speak about Sheraz' first gig and a comedy course he took before he took the stage for the first time. We speak a bit then about comedy courses in general, their pros and cons and the strange experience he had on his when a guy made some risque jokes one time and never showed up. Sheraz regularly releases videos on YouTube, so we speak about them for a bit, his inspiration behind the four different types of videos he puts out and how he got into it. We talk about how he keeps bumping into old men who have a fascination for one aspect of their local region. We speak about our shared interest in religion, while neither of us are religious we speak about how we both find the origins of religions fascinating. We have a chat then about Sheraz' show The Persuit of Manly-ness. We talk about the main theme of the show, are we as men losing our way and becoming less manly? What is 'being manly' even supposed to mean? We delve deep into the topic and discover a few things about ourselves. Sheraz speaks about how he likes to change the order of the show and how he works on trying to perfect it. Finally then, we speak about Sheraz' influences growing up and the type of comedy programmes he was watching in television.

Welcome to Episode #64 of the Zacks Market Edge Podcast. Every week, host and Zacks stock strategist, Tracey Ryniec, will be joined by guests to discuss the hottest investing topics in stocks, bonds and ETFs and how it impacts your life. In this episode, Tracey is joined by Zacks Director of Research, Sheraz Mian. He is also the mastermind behind Zacks Top 10 Stocks to Buy in 2017. This is a buy and hold portfolio of 10 stocks that are purchased in the first week of the new year and held until the end of the year. Sheraz has picked this portfolio for several years so every December he has to narrow down the Zacks universe of covered stocks, which is about 4400 different stocks, into the 10 he feels will perform the best in the following year. It’s not easy. How Sheraz Picks Stocks for the Portfolio He starts with developing his macro view of the economy and what he thinks might happen in the United States and the global economy in a host of areas including with the Federal Reserve, with healthcare policy, with possible trade disputes under the Trump Administration, as well as with the French and German elections still to come later in the year. Once you have developed your strategy for the year, then, he says, the stock picks become clearer. Sheraz picks from Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), #2 (Buy) and #3 (Hold) stocks. He also uses the Zacks Industry and Sector ranks to narrow things further. Zacks.com has a bunch of information you can use to find good quality names, including the analyst estimate data. They wouldn’t say what is in this year’s portfolio, but Tracey and Sheraz were able to analyze what went right and what went wrong in the 2016 portfolio. Sheraz discusses how he picked last year’s portfolio and which of the stocks he still likes in 2017. The Good and Bad of 2016 Sheraz took a risk on energy but it paid off big as Pioneer Natural Resources (PXD) was his biggest winner last year with a 45.8% gain. He didn’t shy away from the banks in 2016. First Republic (FRC) which specializes in high net worth individuals in San Francisco rose 44%. Dave & Buster’s (PLAY) was the smallest company in last year’s portfolio with a $1.7 billion market cap. Listen to the podcast to find out why he picked it last year and what he thinks going forward. EPAM Systems (EPAM) never got momentum. This global IT company fell 13.8%. Manhattan Associates (MANH) was the worst performer in 2016, losing 17.6%. They make software that helps online retailers and sellers. Does Sheraz still like them for 2017? Some of the trends of 2016 will continue into 2017. Which ones? What does Sheraz think of the banking stocks in 2017 after the big run in 2016? Yes, there is a bank in the 2017 portfolio. Also, he’s a former oil analyst, so he’s not hiding from the energy stocks in 2017. But you might be surprised at his pick this year. What other tips does Sheraz have about how to pick stocks? Tune into this week’s podcast to find out. Pioneer Natural Resources: https://www.zacks.com/stock/quote/PXD?cid=cs-soundcloud-ft-pod Dave and Busters: https://www.zacks.com/stock/quote/PLAY?cid=cs-soundcloud-ft-pod First Republic Bank: https://www.zacks.com/stock/quote/FRC?cid=cs-soundcloud-ft-pod EPAM Systems: https://www.zacks.com/stock/quote/EPAM?cid=cs-soundcloud-ft-pod Manhattan Associates: https://www.zacks.com/stock/quote/MANH?cid=cs-soundcloud-ft-pod Follow us on StockTwits: stocktwits.com/ZacksResearch Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/ZacksResearch Like us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ZacksInvestmentResearch

Welcome to Episode #58 of the Zacks Market Edge Podcast. Every week, host and Zacks stock strategist, Tracey Ryniec, will be joined by guests to discuss the hottest investing topics in stocks, bonds and ETFs and how it impacts your life. In this episode, Tracey is joined by Sheraz Mian, Zacks Director of Research, and a former oil analyst, to discuss where the oil market stands at the end of 2016 and what oil stocks investors should be looking at heading into 2017. Tracey and Sheraz first discussed the oil stocks in late 2015 when the crude sell-off was just in the first innings. It wouldn’t hit $25 until February 2016. Back in 2015, Tracey and Sheraz were both worried about which companies had the best balance sheets and how many would survive the most vicious sell off in crude in the last 50 years. But a year later, the story has changed. The US and International rig counts have bottomed and are slowly starting to trickle up. Crude is up off its lows and while it’s not near the $60 or $70 level many thought it would be at the end of the year, it’s in a zone where the oil companies can make money. Cost cutting is mostly complete which means fewer layoffs. The lending situation has also improved which makes it easier for energy companies to renegotiate loans with their banks. Where does this leave investors looking to get into oil stocks? WTI has fallen 14% this fall which has pushed down the exploration and production stocks from their 2016 highs. Sheraz believes this is a buying opportunity in that area, especially for long term investors. In the short term, he still expects crude and the oil stocks to be volatile. The Best Oil Stocks for 2017 1. Chevron (CVX) is the “safe” play and Sheraz’s favorite among the Big Oil stocks. 2. Apache (APA) just made a big discovery in the Alpine High and analysts believe this has big potential in the next few years. Tracey owns this stock in her personal portfolio. 3. EOG Resources (EOG) is very diversified. It has over 14,000 drilling locations in numerous areas. 4. Pioneer Natural Resources (PXD) has one of the best balance sheets in the industry. 5. In the small and mid-cap E&P sectors, look at Whiting Petroleum (WLL) which is strong in the Baaken and Synergy (SYRG), a small E&P in the Wattenberg in Colorado. The insiders have been buying shares in SYRG. Sheraz also thinks investors can poke around in some of the big service companies. With some rigs being reactivated, the first contractors they will call are companies like Schlumberger (SLB) and Halliburton (HAL). Sheraz and Tracey still think it’s too early to get into the niche oil service companies like those that transport personnel to the rigs or provide safety gear. The industry, while on the upswing, isn’t yet at full throttle. Those might be plays later in 2017. What else should you know about the oil stocks and how to play them? Tune into this week’s podcast to find out. Chevron: https://www.zacks.com/stock/quote/CVX?cid=cs-soundcloud-ft-pod Apache Corp: https://www.zacks.com/stock/quote/APA?cid=cs-soundcloud-ft-pod EOG Resources: https://www.zacks.com/stock/quote/EOG?cid=cs-soundcloud-ft-pod Pioneer Natural Resources: https://www.zacks.com/stock/quote/PXD?cid=cs-soundcloud-ft-pod Whiting Petro: https://www.zacks.com/stock/quote/WLL?cid=cs-soundcloud-ft-pod Follow us on StockTwits: stocktwits.com/ZacksResearch Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/ZacksResearch Like us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ZacksInvestmentResearch

Welcome to Episode #43 of the Zacks Market Edge Podcast. Every week, host and Zacks stock strategist, Tracey Ryniec, will be joined by guests to discuss the hottest investing topics in stocks, bonds and ETFs and how it impacts your life. In this episode, Tracey is joined by Sheraz Mian, Zacks Director of Research and a former oil analyst, to discuss the hottest stocks in the energy sector. Crude has fallen 20% from its recent highs and is now considered to be in a bear market. The fall in oil prices has scared energy investors. The energy stocks are weak. Is now the time to be buying? Not all oil stocks are the same, however. Tracey and Sheraz’s give their top oil stock picks for the rest of 2016 (and, in some cases, even beyond.): 1. The big integrated oils are still attractive. Exxon (XOM) and Chevron (CVX) are two standouts despite weak second quarter earnings results. Find out which one is Sheraz’s favorite on the podcast. 2. Like risk? The E&Ps are your play. Look for companies with strong balance sheets. Sheraz likes Pioneer Natural Resources (PXD) and Occidental (OXY) while Tracey has been watching Whiting Petroleum (WLL). 3. There are opportunities in the transports such as the MLPs. Sheraz’s top pick is Enterprise Products (EPD). 4. What about the service companies? Are they still too risky with crude at $40? Tracey and Sheraz also discuss the difference between short term energy investors and those with long term time horizons. What else should you know about the oil stocks? With crude on the move, don’t miss a minute of this week’s podcast. Exxon-Mobil: https://www.zacks.com/stock/quote/XOM?cid=cs-soundcloud-ft-pod Chevron: https://www.zacks.com/stock/quote/CVX?cid=cs-soundcloud-ft-pod Pioneer Natural Resources: https://www.zacks.com/stock/quote/PXD?cid=cs-soundcloud-ft-pod Whiting Petro: https://www.zacks.com/stock/quote/WLL?cid=cs-soundcloud-ft-pod Occidental Petro: https://www.zacks.com/stock/quote/OXY?cid=cs-soundcloud-ft-pod Enterprise Production: https://www.zacks.com/stock/quote/EPD?cid=cs-soundcloud-ft-pod Follow us on StockTwits: stocktwits.com/ZacksResearch Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/ZacksResearch Like us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ZacksInvestmentResearch

Sheraz Mian and Tracey Ryniec discuss where crude is headed for the second half of the year. Welcome to Episode #42 of the Zacks Market Edge Podcast. Every week, host and Zacks stock strategist, Tracey Ryniec, will be joined by guests to discuss the hottest investing topics in stocks, bonds and ETFs and how it impacts your life. In this episode, Tracey is joined by Sheraz Mian, Zacks Director of Research and a former oil analyst, to discuss Goldman Sachs’ recent paper on where crude is headed over the next year. They also discuss the so-called “gloom and doomers” who are still predicting crude as low as $20 even though the US rig count is near a modern day low. Goldman is now predicting that crude will be range-bound between $45 to $50 through the middle of 2017. But what are the risks? How Oil Prices Could Go Lower: 1. If Nigeria and Libya, which have had supply disruptions, can boost production by the second half 2. If there is a global slowdown, especially within China It appears, for now, that the energy sector has bottomed. United Rentals (URI), the largest rental equipment maker in the United States, said that it believes that energy has hit a bottom but it not seeing an upturn. Tracey and Sheraz also consider what will happen when prices actually do rise. If prices breach $50 a barrel, will US producers suddenly jump back into drilling and create yet another crude glut? They discuss numerous reasons why that scenario is unlikely including the hiring patterns at companies like Schlumberger (SLB), Halliburton (HAL) and Oil States International (OIS), which has cut 40% of its workforce. United Rentals: https://www.zacks.com/stock/quote/URI?cid=cs-soundcloud-ft-pod Oil States International: https://www.zacks.com/stock/quote/OIS?cid=cs-soundcloud-ft-pod Halliburton: https://www.zacks.com/stock/quote/HAL?cid=cs-soundcloud-ft-pod Schlumberger: https://www.zacks.com/stock/quote/SLB?cid=cs-soundcloud-ft-pod Goldman Sachs: https://www.zacks.com/stock/quote/GS?cid=cs-soundcloud-ft-pod Follow us on StockTwits: stocktwits.com/ZacksResearch Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/ZacksResearch Like us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ZacksInvestmentResearch

In this episode, Tracey is joined by Sheraz Mian, Zacks Director of Research, who also worked as an oil analyst for seven years. That makes him the perfect guest to have on to discuss what’s really going on in the energy market. Sheraz and Tracey first discussed the crude sell-off and the oil stocks back in December 2015 in Episode #8 of the podcast. It’s worth listening to that podcast first, as Sheraz provides a great outline about how the crude sell off would look in 2016. And he was right! Back then, crude was trading around $40 a barrel and the US rig count had fallen to 744 rigs from its peak of 2031 rigs in 2008. The energy market was grim. There was talk of a massive numbers of bankruptcies and the cutting of dividends. Sheraz predicted that oil prices could briefly decline in the $20s and $30s but he thought they wouldn’t stay there very long because “the best solution for bringing supply back into equilibrium with production is low oil prices.” He also predicted that by the middle of next year (i.e. 2016), there would be sharply lower US inventory and it would be reasonable to expect oil to trade in the high $50s to mid $60s by the end of the year. It turns out he is a bit of an “oil whisperer” as his predictions last year seem to be turning into reality. The number of US oil rigs continued to drop and now sits at just 440. While inventories remain elevated, with production still declining, it’s only a matter of time before inventories start to fall. Does he still think that crude prices will finish the year in the $50s and $60s? And if they do, how do investors take advantage? The oil stocks have had big runs, but Sheraz still likes the E&Ps. In the December 2015 podcast he liked Pioneer Natural Resources (PXD) and still likes it. If you’re looking for a less known name, another one of his E&P favorites is Diamondback Energy (FANG). There’s also the big cap option. Occidental Petroleum (OXY) is high on his list and it still pays a juicy dividend, yielding 4%. For investors looking for diversity, there’s the option of the big integrateds like Exxon (XOM), Chevron (CVX) and British Petroleum (BP). Sheraz discusses which one is his favorite this year. These stocks have had big runs off their lows. Is it too late to get in? And what about the service companies like Schlumberger (SLB) and Halliburton (HAL)? Sheraz and Tracey tackle these oil patch questions and more on this week’s podcast. Pioneer Natural Resources: http://www.zacks.com/stock/quote/PXD?cid=cs-soundcloud-ft-pod Occidental: http://www.zacks.com/stock/quote/OXY?cid=cs-soundcloud-ft-pod Diamondback Energy: http://www.zacks.com/stock/quote/FANG?cid=cs-soundcloud-ft-pod Exxon-Mobil: http://www.zacks.com/stock/quote/XOM?cid=cs-soundcloud-ft-pod Chevron: http://www.zacks.com/stock/quote/CVX?cid=cs-soundcloud-ft-pod Follow us on StockTwits: stocktwits.com/ZacksResearch Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/ZacksResearch Like us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ZacksInvestmentResearch

Guests: Shamira Perera, MD Adjunct Associate Professor, Singapore National Eye Centre Singapore Sheraz M. Daya, MD Medical Director, Centre for Sight London, UK

In this episode, Tracey is joined by Sheraz Mian, Zacks Director of Research, to discuss the e-commerce and retail landscape in India. Sheraz recently returned from a business trip to India where he saw firsthand the impact that the spread of smartphones is having on India, especially when it comes to retail. E-commerce makes up less than 1% of all Indian retail sales but is growing quickly. E-commerce sales are expected to jump to $55 billion by 2018, up from $15 billion in 2015. There are 3 big players in India’s e-commerce industry: 1. Flipkart, a homegrown Indian marketplace, which has about 45% of the market 2. Snapdeal, also a homegrown marketplace, with 26% of the market 3. Amazon (AMZN), with about 15% of the market Alibaba (BABA) is also a player as it has backed Snapdeal and there are rumors it might take a position in Flipkart. It also owns a stake in Paytm, India’s largest mobile wallet company with about 140 million users. A lot of challenges await including addressing the delivery system and payments. Most Indians don’t have credit cards so cash is king. That’s why the payment systems are becoming almost as important as the marketplaces themselves. As for delivering the goods in India’s cities, it’s instrumental to look at how the dabbawallahs deliver over 200,000 lunches to office workers in Mumbai every day, and the implications for e-commerce. I really recommend the 2013 movie The Lunchbox now available on Netflix and Amazon. You’ll be amazed at how they transport lunches via train and bikes to office buildings while rarely making a mistake or delivering late. But for all the challenges facing the retailers, there are some restaurant chains who have managed to make it. They offer valuable lessons. McDonald’s (MCD) has been successful by tweaking its menu towards Indian tastes, which means offering a lot of vegetarian options and spices. Dunkin Donuts (DNKN) and Domino’s (DPZ) have also managed to thrive in India. Both franchises are managed by Jubilant Foodworks, which trades on the Bombay stock exchange. But do Indians really want to eat donuts? And why is Dunkin Donuts called Dunkin Donuts & More in India? Sheraz explains how they found their niche. India is an amazing growth opportunity for many global brands. Retail is an untapped area. Who is going to be able to take advantage of the opportunities? Alibaba: http://www.zacks.com/stock/quote/BABA?cid=cs-soundcloud-ft-pod Amazon: http://www.zacks.com/stock/quote/AMZN?cid=cs-soundcloud-ft-pod McDonald's: http://www.zacks.com/stock/quote/MCD?cid=cs-soundcloud-ft-pod Domino's Pizza: http://www.zacks.com/stock/quote/DPZ?cid=cs-soundcloud-ft-pod Dunkin Donuts: http://www.zacks.com/stock/quote/DNKN?cid=cs-soundcloud-ft-pod Follow us on StockTwits: stocktwits.com/ZacksResearch Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/ZacksResearch Like us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ZacksInvestmentResearch

In this episode, Tracey is joined by Zacks’ Director of Research Sheraz Mian to discuss the fourth quarter earnings outlook. Sheraz is Zacks’ expert on the earnings outlook. His Earnings Trends articles appear every week on Zacks.com. Be sure to check out the articles every week to get updates on earnings estimates. Alcoa (AA) has already reported so the earnings season has now officially started. Earnings estimates for the fourth quarter have been sliding since October. Total earnings for the S&P 500 are expected to be down 7.4% from the fourth quarter last year. Revenue is forecast to be down 4.7% year over year as well. But is it all the energy sector’s fault? Energy’s earnings are expected to be down 67% year over year with revenues falling 37.9%. Unfortunately, the earnings gloom extends beyond energy with four other sectors expected to have double digit earnings declines in the fourth quarter. Anyone watching the commodities rout, won’t be surprised at the dismal outlook for these sectors. But there are still 3 sectors that are supposed to see growth. Is the favored tech sector one of them? China is also on the minds of investors. Will S&P 500 companies be warning about weakness in China or is the Chinese economy better than many believe? Nike (NKE) has already reported earnings and it didn’t have any revenue problem in China. Starbucks (SBUX) also recently announced it was planning an additional 500 stores in China, on top of the 2,000 it already has there, as it remains bullish on that market. Is success in China really a case-by-case basis? For investors, this earnings season looks to be a tricky one. Tracey and Sheraz discuss how to manage it, including 5 stocks that have solid track records of beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate over the last 5 years. For example, blue chip companies General Electric (GE) and L Brands (LB) have perfect earnings surprise records. Neither has missed in 5 years. Who else has a perfect earnings surprise track record over the last 5 years that you should watch this earnings season? Listen to this week’s podcast to find out. Alcoa: http://www.zacks.com/stock/quote/AA?cid=cs-soundcloud-ft-pod Nike: http://www.zacks.com/stock/quote/NKE?cid=cs-soundcloud-ft-pod Starbucks: http://www.zacks.com/stock/quote/SBUX?cid=cs-soundcloud-ft-pod General Electric: http://www.zacks.com/stock/quote/GE?cid=cs-soundcloud-ft-pod L Brands: http://www.zacks.com/stock/quote/LB?cid=cs-soundcloud-ft-pod Follow us on StockTwits: stocktwits.com/ZacksResearch Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/ZacksResearch Like us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ZacksInvestmentResearch

In this episode, Tracey is joined by Sheraz Mian, Zacks Director of Research, who also worked as an oil analyst for seven years. That makes him the perfect guest to have on to discuss what’s really going on in the energy market. With crude still stuck around $40 a barrel over a year after the largest sell off in crude began, it’s worth asking if this energy contraction is different than the others. The two previous major price contractions, in 2008-2009 and 1985-1986, were both swift. The price fell quickly and then started to recover within a year. This time, the chart doesn’t look so friendly. Not only has crude not rebounded, some analysts believe it hasn’t even hit bottom yet. They think crude may go as low as $20 a barrel if the dollar continues to strengthen. With so much uncertainty in the crude market, where does that leave investors interested in the oil stocks? Tracey and Sheraz discuss some of the major exploration and production companies including Anadarko (APC) and Apache (APA). Will they survive the energy downturn? What about their dividends? Will the companies continue to pay those out? Should investors stay clear of all the smaller E&P companies due to the high risks? Or is that where they’ll find the highest reward? They also chat about the big integrated energy companies including Chevron (CVX), Exxon (XOM) and British Petroleum (BP). These are the blue chip energy companies. They’ve been through downturns many times before. Chevron and Exxon have been paying, and raising, their dividends for over two decades. Shares of Big Oil are still weak, but have moved off their lows. Are they even a bargain at these levels? And how safe are those juicy dividends? Sheraz gives his top energy pick and Tracey discloses which energy stocks are already in her portfolio. Listen to the podcast to find out more about what is going on in the oil patch. Anadarko Petrol: http://www.zacks.com/stock/quote/APC?cid=cs-soundcloud-ft-pod Apache Corp: http://www.zacks.com/stock/quote/APA?cid=cs-soundcloud-ft-pod Chevron Corp: http://www.zacks.com/stock/quote/CVX?cid=cs-soundcloud-ft-pod Exxon Mobile: http://www.zacks.com/stock/quote/XOM?cid=cs-soundcloud-ft-pod BP Plc: http://www.zacks.com/stock/quote/BP?cid=cs-soundcloud-ft-pod Follow us on StockTwits: stocktwits.com/ZacksResearch Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/ZacksResearch Like us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ZacksInvestmentResearch

KDee (born Sheraz Mohammed, July 5th, 1991) is a Trinidadian Reggae/Dancehall Soca deejay. He was born at San Fernando General Hospital, and is one of three children. Initially from La Romain, he was raised in the San Fernando district. Sheraz attended TML Primary School where he left to the United States before writing common entrance to further his education at the age of ten. Indomitable to further his studies in America, he attended James M. Kieran Junior High School for Pre Engineering. Furthermore he completed his Diploma at Samuel Gompers Vocational and Technical High School. After taking a year beak from studies, KDee decided to enroll in ASA The College for Excellence where he received his Associates in Occupational Studies Degree for Network Administration and Security. Sheraz alias KDee was a naturalist of music at a tender age, he was exposed to a wide variety of genres from family members being that his father and sister were both singers in the Republic of Trinidad

- Sheraz Mian, Director of Research at Zacks, analyzes the current earnings season so far, and what's yet to come. - Please call 1-800-388-9700 for a free review of your financial portfolio.

- Sheraz Mian, Director of Research at Zacks Investment Research discusses 1st quarter earnings. - Please call 1-800-388-9700 for a free review of your financial portfolio.