Without further adieu, on to the reason why you are reading this, which is to hopefully make money. Over the past 60 day or so, which seems like 15 years given how much time and energy I have put into setting up Sylva, I have spoken to a plethora of fund managers, investment advisers, high net worth types and people who have no idea what a ticker is and asked them how they feel the economy is doing.  The common answer was "ok". Considering people seem to think the economy is "ok", I wanted to find out where money goes in an economy rated "ok" in my 150 person or so entirely unscientific poll. So I turned to fund flows. For those of you who follow asset flows, a great resource is Morningstar (I even wrote this without being paid by them, you are welcome Morningstar) and their most recent report can be accessed by clicking on the link below and a pdf will appear:

http://corporate.morningstar.com/US/documents/AssetFlows/AssetFlowsSep2016.pdf

As one can surmise from the Morningstar article/pdf, active fund managers are being slammed with redemption's (likely due to hiding in cash due to fear of the market's direction and missing the summer move up) and passive funds continue to see money move their way $16.4B inflow in August, although the inflow was half that of July which was $33.8B. The data tells us the money moving into equities is mainly moving into ETF's (exchange traded funds, essentially a basket of stocks) or into the indexes because investors seem to think they can outperform active money managers, and why not, they have been right essentially for the past decade. This in my opinion will end and end soon. Why? The answer being when rates rise only certain industries will participate. I predict an upward move of certain industries and within those industries some stocks will perform better than others. Not to sound like a broken record, but to be abundantly clear, many retail investors have turned to ETF's as many ETF's have performed better than many active money managers. When rates rise (December) and the Fed signals to the world they will continue to raise rates during 2017, everyone will likely pile into bank ETF's, wisely playing the "rising rates is good for banks" trade. The problem is, some awful banks are in most of the bank ETF's. I won't name any bank specifically, but look at a couple of large banks that have been in the news for reasons they don't want to be in the news. One massive bank is in the news for creating fake accounts and had their CEO testify before some members of Congress. That is a bank I would avoid like the plague and there are others too.

Now let's turn our attention to the election and the cartoon I included which I thought was pretty funny. Those of you voting for Mrs. Clinton may not find it so funny (as an aside, I have no idea who I am voting for yet). The first debate was just about unwatchable and Trump completely dominated Clinton in the body language and interruption department in terms of entertainment (body language) and interruption (did he ever let her speak?). I mean the poor woman could barely get a word in. I only watched about 15 minutes and had to turn the television off because watching and listening to Trump, totally unprepared and clearly making up his answers as he goes, is painful to listen to. Round 1 of the debates in my book went to Clinton.

The one point that drives me insane about this election, more so than any others, is the hesitancy of turning over tax documents by Trump. The media seems to assume the guy skirted the IRS and has bank accounts in numerous tax havens and money stashed with rat holes all over the world. For those unfamiliar with what a rat hole is, that is when someone else is holding another's assets in order for the other to seem less rich and in turn pay less tax or avoid disclosure to some regulatory authority, etc. Anyone flying around in planes that "humbly" identify the passenger inside, is not going to be an average American.  Therefore Trump's shock at the scrutiny he is receiving is almost comical. Also, the media seems to be hammering him about his delay in turning over his tax documents. This has lead the mainstream media believe and make us seemingly believe Trump is not as wealthy as advertised. Who knows, and that is what is so scary about this election, who knows anything about either of them...scary stuff.

Going forward I will list some companies I feel are worthy of your attention, in full disclosure, I am working with some of these companies to help them become identified and others I am not as they already have the attention of the mainstream, at least to a degree. The reason I help some companies get identified is because they have no outlets by which they can get attention other than me, because all the mainstream outlets focus on the "big boys and girls" or larger companies. In many instances, I put "my money where my mouth is" meaning I have purchased stock and will continue to purchase stock in some of the companies listed below because I believe they will ultimately disrupt their industry with what they are developing or have developed. The list of companies I am currently watching is as follows for October:

Wells Fargo (WFC)

Vuzix Corp (VUZI)

Snipp Interactive (SPN-V)

Facebook (FB)

Insignia Systems (ISIG)

Oracle Corp (ORCL)

PeerLogix, Inc (LOGX)

CLS Holdings (CLSH)

Sysroex Global (SYRX)

Goldman Sachs (GS)

Biogen (BIIB)

Soligenix (SNGX)

Gilead Sciences (GILD)

Mast Therapeutics (MSTX)

Trillium Therapeutics (TRIL)

Towerstream Corp (TWER)

At&T (T)

Qualcomm (QCOM)

Fiserv, Inc (FISV)

Jack Henry & Assoc (JKHY)

Cachet Financial (CAFN)

Cummins Inc (CMI)

Power Solutions Intl (PSIX)

Navistar Intl (NAVI)

That's all folks, see you next month!