Pat Fitzgibbons Chats on AOL's MarketTalk, Oct. 30, 2000

Patrick M. Fitzgibbons chatted on AOL MarketTalk Monday, Oct. 30, 2000, at 3:30 p.m. EDT. AOL's MarketTalk is produced by Sage Online (Keyword: Markettalk).

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

SageMoola: Good afternoon and welcome to MarketTalk, Pat!

PFitzgibbo: Good afternoon, everybody. Big day for the Dow!

Question: Do you think that this has been a positive earnings season, and if so, do you think that fourth-quarter earnings will also be strong?

PFitzgibbo: I think, in general, it was a pretty good quarter, when compared to reality. Compared to the last year or so, maybe a few people were disappointed.

But, for most companies, they're still doing well. The fourth quarter is typically a better one for the market as a lot of people are putting cash to work.

Question: Where's the bottom on the Nasdaq?

PFitzgibbo: It's a little hard to say for sure, but there has been some solid support around the 3000 level.

Every time it touches that number it seems to pull a little bounce back.

Question: Hell Pat, do you think WBVN has a chance with all the money they owe?

PFitzgibbo: Well, it's kind off tough to make it in this environment when you're a new company; one of the things to look out for is too much debt.

Their business model could really suffer if they are worrying about providing a great deal of debt service.

Question: Where do you see interest rates headed over the next couple months?

PFitzgibbo: We have done a great deal of reporting at TheStreet.com on the future of interest rates in the past few weeks. The likely consensus we're hearing is that rates will not change much before the early part of next year.

But there are opinions on both sides of that... So, handle with care!

Question: Is this really a rally by the DOW?

PFitzgibbo: You know what the saying is, if it walks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck...

It's a duck.

It's certainly a rally today, and with the bulk of earnings done, people seem to be coming back into this market.

Question: Do you see a rebound in the fiber-optic sector soon?

PFitzgibbo: It's pretty hard to say for sure.

But if tech comes back and shows a little life, as a lot of very smart people think it will, then there's no reason the fiber optics can't make a rebound.

Question: If you had new money to invest for the long term 5+ yrs in what areas would you invest?

PFitzgibbo: I think I would diversify the money between a number of sectors, depending on what you want out of the money.

I would certainly want to put a portion of the money into tech stocks.

Take a chance with a little of it. And I would want to put a portion into the relatively safe investments.

Either bonds of some sort, or relatively safe stock investments.

Question: Would you now avoid stocks with a high price-to-earnings ratio?

PFitzgibbo: I think you always have to be wary of high P/E's. They carry, understandably, higher risk.

However, maybe what that really means is that you have to do a little more work on stocks like that.

High P/E's don't in and of themselves make for a bad business.

What they mean is that the company may have just not become profitable yet.

SageMoola: Thank you very much for joining us today, Pat!

PFitzgibbo: Thanks for some very lively questions! Dow up 230 points! See you on TheStreet.com!

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