Lou Gerstner

Chief executive, IBM

In the role: Apr 1993 – Mar 2002
Birth date: 1 March 1942 No source recorded here yet
Birth time: Unknown. A reading is issued only when it holds whichever hour Lou was born.

Readings in role

8 years on record

Readings are issued for leaders in the role, one of five levels read for the calendar year from the birth date. Lou is not in the role now; the record covers the years in it.

Years in role by level

Strong: 2 of 2 rose
Firm: 1 of 1 rose
Even: 3 of 4 rose
Soft: none
Weak: 0 of 1 rose

All leaders, 1995–2025: Strong 76% of 256 · Firm 71% of 709 · Even 67% of 2,016 · Soft 59% of 310 · Weak 50% of 191.

Year by year

Every calendar year Lou led IBM with a reading on record, and what the stock did that year. Past years are read with the rules now fixed; the return is the stock's from January to December.

IBM rose in 6 of 8 years.

Lou Gerstner at IBM, by year
Year	Reading	Stacked	IBM	Result
2002	Weak	0 signals, 1 drag	−35.5%	Fell
2001	Firm	1 signal, 0 drags	+43.0%	Rose
2000	Even	0 signals, 0 drags	−20.8%	Fell
1999	Even	0 signals, 0 drags	+17.6%	Rose
1998	Strong	2 signals, 0 drags	+77.5%	Rose
1997	Strong	2 signals, 0 drags	+39.3%	Rose
1996	Even	1 signal, 1 drag	+67.7%	Rose
1995	Even	0 signals, 0 drags	+25.6%	Rose

Readings: One of five levels a year, with how many signals and drags stacked, computed from the birth date over the thirteen possible birth hours and issued only where at least ten agree. Built 2026-10-16 from research export f0c9e40. The rules stay in-house.
Stock data: Calendar-year and monthly % change of adjusted close. Volatility % = annualised stdev of the 12 monthly returns. No prices are included. Adjusted close is split-adjusted, so a stock split never appears as a move in anything plotted here, and stock splits are not recorded as events.
Birth dates: 206 of the 319 people in this dataset now have at least one source recorded here, across 207 of the 325 leader-company records — six people ran two companies and are stored once for each. Of those sources — all 207 of them — 204 are a stated age read out of an SEC proxy statement, which bounds a birth year and says nothing about the day; one is an age stated in a press report; two state the day itself, one from an official gazette read by a person and one from an encyclopedia. The day is what every reading on this site is calculated from, so for all but those two birth dates no source here backs the part that is used. The 204 records the pass produced were not reviewed by a person: each source names who read it. Six findings from the same pass are deliberately not entered, because in each one the date held here falls outside the bound the filing implies, and telling an ordinary record-date lag from a real disagreement needs a person rather than arithmetic. An absent entry still means no source is recorded here yet.
Research export: Version 2, generated 2026-10-16 from research commit 7d490ef with uncommitted changes

Research and exploration only. Not investment advice. A reading describes a leader's year from their birth date, not the stock.