• The keffiyeh is an ancient traditional headdress worn by men, and is most connected to the Bedouins. While the keffiyeh was worn by both Yasser Arafat and Che Guevara, it was also worn by bohemian American girls in the 1980s.
• Critics of the keffiyeh's symbolism point to its connection with Palestinians and Fatah. However, Palestinians themselves wear the headdresses no matter what their party affiliation or political leanings.
• Arabs are not all terrorists. In fact, most Arabs are not terrorists. Connecting an ancient traditional garment worn by millions across dozens of countries to a tiny (no matter how awful) faction of criminals seems racist.
• Rachael Ray is not wearing a keffiyeh in this picture. She is wearing a paisley scarf with a fringe, selected by her stylist. Honestly, I don't think it looks great on her, but what do I know.

Rachael Ray wears scarf, Dunkin Donuts pulls ad due to terrorism accusation originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 28 May 2008 15:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The holiday season is upon us and that translates to shopping season. Generally speaking, I hate shopping and refrain from getting anywhere near a shopping mall or mingling with all the shop-o-holics. However, shopping for stocks is different and it is always the season for that.

Finding the best stock values for next year would be a great gift for everyone that is paying attention to my ramblings, that is, if I am able to maintain my track record. This mission was first shared in Serious Money: Hot stocks for a cool year -- finding 8 for 2008. The heart of the story, the possible stocks, are posted below again, because this is a running story. I have bolded the new info as the story builds and I examine things more closely. But before we get to that review I am adding two companies.

The first to be added, and a candidate that has a good chance to be included in the final eight is Newcastle Investment Corp (NYSE: NCT). For the detailed review read yesterday's story Chasing Value: Newcastle's 21.9% yield too good to be true?. I will summarize here by letting you know, I did what homework I could as well as check out NCT's recent conference call. This company has averaged an 8.8% yield over the last five years. However, today because the stock is now a third of it's recent price the yield has jumped to 21.9%. Newcastle is standing by this dividend. Actually I think they have to because REITS are required to pay out most of their profits and they have earned 23% over the last fiscal year.

The stock is down because the underlying value of the collateral has gone soft in some cases, but mostly they have fallen victim to the generally poor market for various classes of loan packages, be they Alt-A, sub-prime CDO's, or uncle Joe's handshake. That said, NCT's cash flow seems fine, it only has 10% of its portfolio in residential real estate and of that they claim to have a 60 day delinquency rate of less than 1%. NCT also expects $1 billion of loan repayments over the next year. The PEG ratio is 0.15 and they are trading at a book value of 0.74. At the conference call they claimed a book value after being marked-to-market of $15 to $16 a share. This is a strong value proposition.

Gallery: Chasing Value: 8 for 2008

Continue reading Holiday shopping? Buy stocks, not clothes: searching for 8 for 2008

Holiday shopping? Buy stocks, not clothes: searching for 8 for 2008 originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 30 Nov 2007 19:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.