Louis Richard Rukeyser (January 30, 1933 – May 2, 2006) was an American financial journalist, columnist, and commentator, through print, radio, and television.

Named by People magazine as the only sex symbol of "the dismal science" of economics,[1] Rukeyser won numerous awards and honors over his lifetime.

Rukeyser was famous for his pun-filled humor, and for advising investors to ignore short-term gyrations of the market and think long term.

from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 1954 after completing a senior thesis titled The Press and Senator McCarthy - a Study of the Coverage of a Controversial Figure by Six New York Newspapers.

Rukeyser took pride in creating the first television show which focused on Wall Street, using a combination of erudition, plainspokenness, and panache to make the arcane workings of the stock market and the economy better known to the public.

In his final episode, which was broadcast live, he deplored the decision of Maryland Public Television's management and urged viewers to write their PBS stations and clamor for the new financial program he would soon create.

Highly unusual for a cable network, advertising on the show was limited to before-and-after underwriting announcements similar to those on non-commercial broadcast stations.

This was done at Rukeyser's insistence, so that WLIW, the secondary PBS station in the New York area, could offer the program to its viewers on the weekend.

However, in 1987, Professor Robert Pari of Bentley College published an academic article in the Journal of Portfolio Management detailing the results of a study that found that stocks recommended by Rukeyser's guests on Wall Street Week not only tended to rise in price and trading volume in the days preceding the Friday evening broadcast, peaking on the Monday afterward, but also tended to under perform the market for up to a year following the recommendation.

[12] Rukeyser strongly disputed this analysis, but ten years later Professors Jess Beltz and Robert Jennings published another academic article in the Review of Financial Economics reporting results consistent with Pari's original findings, and that there was "little correlation between the 6-month performance of a recommendation and the abnormal volume at the date the recommendation is made."