Brian Sozzi is Chief Equities Analyst for NBG Productions and Portfolio Manager for Decoding Wall St. In the Chief Equities Analyst capacity, he is responsible for developing independant opinions/ratings and actionable stock recommendations across NBG Productions' various brands. As Portfolio Manager for Decoding Wall St., he is responsible for managing two portfolios for retail and institutional investors, including one focused on dividend-paying stocks and the other for more active investors. In addition, he is an active contributor to Forbes, TheStreet, Men's Health, and Benzinga. Website: www.decodingwallst.com Twitter: @BrianSozzi Sozzi was previously a senior equity research analyst specializing in the apparel and hard goods sectors of the retail industry for Wall Street Strategies Inc., where he managed a client book that included leading financial institutions. He also contributed to his firm's twice-daily stock market commentary and trading services, and monthly newsletter. Sozzi became recognized by StarMine as a top-ranked equity research analyst for stocks under coverage in such categories as EPS Estimate Accuracy and Industry Excess Return. Sozzi was then awarded the 2011 FT | StarMine Analyst Award for No. 3 Earnings Estimator in the Textiles Apparel and Luxury Goods Industry. Routinely sought after as a trusted point of reference for opinions and insight on the global economy and stock evaluation, Sozzi was a frequent on-air guest on CNBC, and more recently has appeared on Bloomberg, the Fox Business Network, and PBS, and is cited regularly by online/print publications that include CNBC.com, Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch, Reuters, The Associated Press, Barron's, Financial Times and Kiplinger's. He graduated summa cum laude from Dowling College.