Ron Insana

Ron Insana does an interview with a former Federal Reserve governor about a rate cut, and a slipping market begins a rebound--the actual cut happens a week later.

Mr. Insana's rising star often seems hitched to both smart reporting and a bit of luck.

While still green at 24 and functioning as a one-man news department in the Los Angeles bureau of the Financial News Network, both of FNN's regular anchors called in sick. Mr. Insana found himself delivering the news before a nationwide audience.

"I was ad-libbing about stuff I knew nothing about," he says. Two years later, vacationing in Chicago in October 1987, he got himself to the floor of the Chicago Board of Options to anchor FNN's live coverage of the stock market crash &emdash; earning a nomination for a Golden Ace award. With the acquisition of FNN by CNBC in 1991, Mr. Insana suddenly had a larger cable audience.

Today, besides appearances on "NBC Nightly News," the "Today Show," MSNBC and Don Imus' syndicated radio show, he co-anchors CNBC's "Business Center" and hosts "Street Signs," which focuses on the New York Stock Exchange and commodities trading.

All of which provides a mother lode for more of the juicy tidbits of the type he collected for his 1996 book, "Trader's Tales: A Chronicle of Wall Street Myths, Legends and Outright Lies."