Patrick M. Fitzgibbons Chats on AOL, Sept. 11

Patrick M. Fitzgibbons chatted on AOL MarketTalk on Monday, Sept. 11. AOL's MarketTalk is hosted by Sage Online (Keyword: PF Live).

OnlineHost: Live from New York, NY, please welcome Pat Fitzgibbons, markets editor, TheStreet.com.

Pat can answer questions about the markets and investing. Pat does NOT offer individual stock commentaries or recommendations.

OnlineHost: Visit Keyword: TheStreet.

SageMoola: Welcome to MarketTalk, Mr. Fitzgibbons!

TSCFitzgibbons: How's everybody doing?

Hope we can make some sense out of this wild market today!

Question: What effect will OPEC's increased oil production have on the economy and the stock market?

TSCFitzgibbons: Oil price is something we look at carefully and OPEC's decision definitely impacts how the economy is going to be able to produce.

Question: Which areas of technology are you currently recommending?

TSCFitzgibbons: We actually don't recommend any stocks; however, there are different places that you can look to find what different firms are recommending.

While you have to be very careful with what you're investing in, these can often be a great help for you.

You can look at what different analysts are saying and check how their performance has been.

As far as TheStreet.com, and especially reporters and editors, we don't recommend stocks.

Question: I have recently come into money and believe the best thing to do would be to invest. What would be the easiest if not fastest way to get an idea of what's going on in the market?

TSCFitzgibbons: It's an exciting time in the market right now and I think this is probably the best time to invest, at least over the last 20 years or so.

There's more information out there than ever before. Certainly you can look at TheStreet.com and get a sense of what sectors of the market are hot and what sectors are struggling.

And there are other sites, other news sources that you should certainly avail yourself of.

The one sort of caveat about how you do your information is to just make sure you're getting different ideas.

There are many information resources that are free and it's your money. Invest in what you're comfortable with or what sort of investment you're looking for.

The other thing to think about is if this is a great deal of money, you should think of getting an investment adviser.

Question: Will oil prices continue to hurt the market? And for how long?

TSCFitzgibbons: Again, oil is something that needs to be watched very carefully, and oil will always impact the market one way or the other.

Question: What do you think the Consumer Price Index will tell us this week about the state of the economy?

TSCFitzgibbons: I think that that is one of the most closely watched economic indicators every month. It will give us a more clear sense of what the Federal Reserve will do at its next policy meeting.

And as always, it will give us a sense of how inflation is growing. And inflation is something that the Fed looks at very carefully when they make their decisions on monetary policy.

Question: Is this market today a sell on Monday buy on Tuesday situation?

TSCFitzgibbons: If I knew that one for sure, I'd definitely be keeping that one for myself, retiring from my job, and investing it all in the ones that are sure to go up.

But seriously, I think that it's very difficult to predict the market right now.

And you need to be careful about assuming that just because it's a down Monday, it's going to be an up Tuesday.

Question: In your opinion are financials still undervalued?

TSCFitzgibbons: I think that as with all other sectors that we follow there are pockets that are undervalued and pockets that are overvalued.

We're going to need to monitor very carefully and investors will also whether more mergers occur in this space and what that does to the brokerage business and to the banking business.

Question: What do you see for Fiber optics?

TSCFitzgibbons: Fiber optics have been a very hot sector and we've been following it very closely as many of our recent stories have dealt with the fiber optic world.

However, many of the products that are being developed in this sector are brand new.

They are doing a lot of cutting edge research and most is fascinating, however, all won't be profitable.

And that's something that you always need to consider when investing in tech stocks or stocks where there's just a lot of research going on.

Question: Do you think there will be more mergers in the wine industry?

TSCFitzgibbons: Wine, eh?

For myself, I would prefer there were more mergers between lousy and good wines so I don't get tricked into buying some of the garbage that's out there.

The wine industry is populated by a few very big houses, a whole lot of small boutique vineyards most of which are nowhere near being public or it would be responsible for them to be public; however, with some of the bigger brands I think that mergers will continue because it just makes economic sense in obeying the law of large numbers.

SageMoola: Thank you very much for joining us today, Mr. Fitzgibbons!

TSCFitzgibbons: Thanks very much for the interesting questions and I hope to see you all on TheStreet.com!

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