This note was originally published at 8am this morning, September 8, 2010. INVESTOR and RISK MANAGER SUBSCRIBERS have access to the EARLY LOOK (published by 8am every trading day) and PORTFOLIO IDEAS in real-time.

“Somebody gets to be smart and somebody gets to be dumb. If we win, it'll be because of the President. And if we lose, it'll be because of me.”
-Karl Rove

 
Yesterday afternoon at our offices in New Haven, CT, Daryl Jones and I hosted former White House Deputy Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor to President George W. Bush, Karl Rove, for a political strategy conference call.
 
For the record, before you call me a raging Republican, remember that I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican. I am Canadian (with a green card and an American son who has much better chances of wearing his country’s Olympic hockey jersey on this side of the border!).
 
I, like most immigrant small business owners in this country, fundamentally believe in doing the best I can to provide for both my American family and American employees. This includes analyzing and understanding US political policy as it is going to affect markets and my firm’s future.
 
If I couldn’t stand Karl Rove’s politics, I’d still have invited him to our offices to meet with us. How else would a Risk Manager of both global market strategy and local payroll-punching get to the right answers?
 
It turns out that Rove was perfectly analytical and proactively prepared with plenty of math. The data, after all, doesn’t lie as much as some of America’s current politicians do. That said, the data can still change before the mid-term elections in November.
 
Daryl Jones will publish a more in depth research note later on today that covers some very interesting intermediate to long term US political strategy topics that we dug into with Mr. Rove in our Q&A session (the changing US electorate, small business healthcare spending, taxes, etc.).
 
For now, I’ll spare you having to watch the DVR version of this weekend’s Meet The Press where CNBC’s money-honey-mini, Erin Burnett, espoused her unqualified US political strategy thoughts about how the economy has seen the “stimulus really work” and give you some proactive political predictions that you can hold Karl Rove to:
 
1.      The Republicans will win the House by a wider than expected margin.

2.      The Democrats will cede at least 8 seats to the Republicans in the Senate.

3.      The anti-incumbent vote in America will be pervasive theme.

 
“Anti-incumbent” means anti any professional politician in Washington who sold you a bill of dry heaves in the most recent election, or as Mr. Rove called them, incumbent politicians with a “D” after their name who are perceived to be easiest to blame. Shock-and-awe, eh? A Republican strategist concluding that the Democrats are going to get rolled over in the mid-terms!
 
Well, take it from one Canadian with an American family looking to be on the right side of this immediate term TRADE rather than get stuck in the partisanship of being wrong and blaming someone else’s politics for it – I think Rove’s got this one right.
 
If you’d like the slide deck that backs Rove’s analysis and the replay of the conference call, please email sales@hedgeye.com <mailto:sales@hedgeye.com> . I’ll be happy to print the most analytical rebuttal to Mr. Rove’s conclusions, provided that you let me print your name on the analysis like he did with his. This is the only way I know to strap on the accountability pants folks. I’d much rather be proven wrong here than remain wrong…
 
Whether we like politics or not, we all have to play the risk management game that’s in front of us. To spend or not to spend more taxpayer moneys on “stimulating” the economy, remains the question.
 
The SP500 was down -1.2% yesterday to 1091, taking its cumulative decline since its YTD high on April 23rd to -10.4%, and its YTD loss for 2010 to -2.2%. Was yesterday’s weakness related to an expectation mismatch associated with an alleged “better than expected” employment report on Friday? Or was it based on another partisan “spending plan” of $50 BILLION that Americans don’t buy into?
 
Plenty more questions remain for the Fiat Spending Bulls this morning than there are answers. I don’t need Karl Rove to remind me of that. My immediate term support and resistance levels for the SP500 are now 1086 and 1107, respectively.
 
Best of luck out there today,
KM