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To: William who wrote (1163)	4/6/1999 11:37:00 PM
From: Mike Buckley	Respond to of 54805

William, <<What exactly does that mean? If it isn't reported as income where does it show up?>> I'm no accounting guru, but I think FASB frowns on reporting options income as income. Reporting it on the income statement would give corporations too much opportunity to manipulate income. A company would be able to sell a lot of puts or calls at the end of the quarter and generate income that is not a one-time gain and, thus, should be included for evaluation purposes. The solution, if I remember correctly, is that cash gained from the sale of option contracts shows up on the balance sheet but not the income statement. I imagine it also shows up in the cash flow statement and there might be special notes about it. My experience with this comes from bad experiences with Rainforest Cafe (RAIN.) That management team has for long had a policy of selling puts. One problem is that the stock went down tremendously and they would have been better off buying the underlying stock instead of having it put to them at much higher prices. The second problem is that in the case of Rain, there are not as many options traded. The market seems to be able to know exactly when Rain is active in the options market. That wouldn't be the case of your other examples of Dell, Softie and Intel. Like I mentioned, I'm no guru about this. If it's important to you it would be good to verify my understanding. --Mike Buckley