After the closing bell Monday, Oracle (ORCL) CEO Larry Ellison announced that he adopted a trading plan that would cut his stake to 22.3% (from 23.4%) by next year.

This plan will give the CEO the capability of selling up to 50 million shares over a 10-month period that will start no earlier than late June. The move will reduce Ellison's beneficial ownership to roughly 1.13 billion shares.

Rumors persist about the health of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs. Gizmodo reported a rumor that his rapidly deteriorating health was the reason he canceled an appearance at next week's Macworld conference.

Sadly, his health problems are not new. According to Valleywag/Gawker, Jobs's surgery to treat his pancreatic cancer changed the flow of his digestive system, making it hard for him to digest some foods -- and Valleywag/Gawker reports that Jobs can no longer drink his favorite beverage, a nonalcoholic grape juice from California's Navarro vineyards. Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) CEO Larry Ellison, who is a close friend of Jobs, once broke down in tears and said, "My best friend is dying."

Investors are betting that Jobs does not have much time left. Trading in puts -- an option to sell the stock at a fixed price which is generally used to bet on a decline -- has risen. For example, volume of puts which can be exercised in January 2009 at a strike price of 80 and 85 surged to a high 10,000. Prior to 12:30 pm, those January 80 puts traded between $1.63 and $2.05, but when these rumors appeared thereafter, the puts rose to between $3.07 and $3.72 and peaked at $5.05 as volume jumped.

Are these just false rumors like the one in October about his heart attack? Apple is not shedding any light on the subject.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He has no financial interest in the securities mentioned.

If Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL) is going to get investor's attention, it will have to demonstrate some organic growth, and not growth from simply adding on more sales from the recent slew of acquisitions.

Oracle reports results following the market's close tonight with profits expected to rise to $1.81 billion, or 35 cents a share, excluding one-time items for the May 31 quarter. Net income was $1.3 billion, or 24 cents, a year earlier.

Ellison set a target of $50 billion in annual sales by 2012 in a recent meeting with his sales force. Hitting that target would require a 23 percent annual sales increase, a huge number. That figure exceeds Oracle's recent growth rate of about 20 percent.

The Redwood City-based software company will once again post massive cash flow generation, however, if investors sense intense pricing pressure by combining product offerings and dropping prices, do not expect much upside in Oracle's stock price. Conversely, if price compression is not too bad, investors may be all over this stock.

Last week Microsoft's Bill Gates expressed regret about being the world's richest man. When I read this, I was reminded of the expression, "be careful what you wish for, you might get it."

Before launching into an analysis of how Gates could be toppled from his throne, it's worth noting that I've admired Microsoft and wondered whether it's lost its elbow room. I praised Microsoft's ability to adapt to change in two of my books, The Technology Leaders and Value Leadership. But in the last several years, Microsoft seems to have lost its mojo as I noted in these interviews by Red Herring and The Washington Post.

Here's a surprise. The biggest threat to Gates's top rank on the Forbes 400 comes not from the number two on the list, but from numbers 15 and 16. According to that September 2005 list, Gates's net worth totaled $51 billion. Berkshire Hathaway's Warren Buffett came in second at $49 billion. And he was followed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen ($22.5B), Dell's Michael Dell ($18B) and Oracle's Larry Ellison ($17B). Spots six through 12 were occupied by descendants of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton, Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, and heiresses from Cox Enterprises and Fidelity.