For those of you concerned about haircuts — and here we're talking about real cuts, not the financial ones likely to be suffered by holders of Greek and Puerto Rican debt — MarketWatch reporter
Charles Passy offers a newsflash.
Hillary Clinton recently received a haircut at a fancy New York salon that normally charges $600, according to the New York Post, while Warren Buffett reportedly pays $18 per cut. That makes Clinton's cuts 33 times more expensive than Buffett's.
To be sure, Clinton has nothing on 2008 Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, who reportedly paid $1,250 per trim.
Passy earned an exclusive interview with Buffett's Omaha, Neb. barber, Stan Docekal, who plies his trade for the investment legend every two or three weeks. "I let him do his thing," Docekal said. And what does Buffett do while he's in the chair? He usually watches TV news, the barber reveals.
Elsewhere on the Buffett front, few experts are as adept as him in determining fair value for stocks. And according to one of his favorite metrics, Chinese stocks aren't overvalued, despite the 73 percent return of the Shanghai Composite Index over the past year.
China's market has been whipsawed by violent moves in both directions recently, with the Shanghai index dropping 28 percent since June 12. "But volatility has never scared away Buffett," write
Stephen Gandel and Stacy Jones of Fortune magazine.
About 15 years ago, Buffett offered his favorite measure for determining whether stocks are fairly valued. It's a ratio of the entire stock market's value to GDP. Buffett sees a ratio of 70 to 80 percent as a buying opportunity, and a reading over 133 percent as a sign of overvaluation.
Buffett's gauge now "offers a surprisingly positive message [for China], especially compared to what it is saying right now about the U.S.," Gandel and Jones explain.
Through Tuesday, the ratio stood at 110 percent for China, and 125 percent for the United States, they calculate.
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