Nate Silver - FiveThirtyEight Blog. On Thursday, after LeBron James and the Miami Heat won their second consecutive N.B.A. championship, I noted on Twitter that James was on the same pace as the Chicago Bulls great Michael Jordan. Both James and Jordan won their first championship at 27 and their second at 28, I wrote. Jordan went on to win four more N.B.A. titles, for a total of six. Mike Segar/ReutersLeBron James and Michael Jordan were about the same age when they won a second championship. My statement depended on a technicality, I later discovered: Jordan’s biological age was 28 when he won his first championship, in 1991, and 29 when he won his second, in 1992. However, basketball statisticians generally define a player’s age differently: by how old he was as of Feb. 1 of an N.B.A. season, the rough midpoint of the basketball calendar. Those semantics aside, it is worth considering just how likely James might be to match or exceed Jordan’s six titles. By my count, there were 13 such players before James.
The Long War Journal. Salon.com. Dealbreaker: Wall Street Insider – Financial News, Headlines, Commentary and Analysis – Hedge Funds, Private Equity, Banks. Stocks To Watch Today. Wal-Mart (WMT) finished higher on Thursday, after announcing a new money-transfer business, Walmart-2-Walmart, launching next week. The new service will let customers transfer as much as $900 through the retailer’s U.S. network of more than 4,000 stores.
The company says that the service will offer lower prices to its low-income customers, many of whom cannot participate in the regular banking system. The world’s largest retailer already provides money orders and tax preparation, along with check-cashing, bill-paying services. As The Wall Street Journal reports, Wal-Mart’s prices do appear to undercut rivals. The market certainly seems to be nervous, sending Western Union (WU) 5% lower on Thursday, while MoneyGram International (MGI) suffered a 17.7% drop.
They have a Buy rating and $19 price target on the stock. However, Horn was less sanguine about MoneyGram, which has a contract with Wal-Mart, and said it accounted for 27% of its total fee and investment revenue last year.