Last night, Pacific Sunwear of California, Inc. (PSUN: sentiment, chart, options) said it narrowed its fiscal third-quarter loss and total sales dropped 5% as consumers continued to cut back on spending. Today, the shares of PSUN were busy being hit with a number of brokerage actions.

Specifically,

• Friedman, Billings, & Ramsey cut its price target from $3 to $2, and reiterated its "market perform" rating.
• UBS raised the shares from "sell" to "neutral."
• The shares were upgraded at Citigroup from "sell" to "hold."
• Wedbush slashed its price target from $3 to $2, while reiterating its "hold" rating.
• Credit Suisse lowered its price-target estimate from $6 to $3.
• Mkm Partners upgraded the firm from "underperform" to "hold."

Not unlike most retail stocks, PSUN has had a rough year. The equity has dropped more than 90% during the past 52 weeks, and when compared to the SPX 500 Index (SPX), the security has trailed the indicator by 70% during the past 40 days.

According to Zacks, all of the analysts covering PSUN currently rate the shares a "hold" or worse, which doesn't seem surprising considering the stock's technical performance.

However, what is surprising is the amount of optimism from option players. The stock's Schaeffer's put/call open interest ratio (SOIR) is docked at 0.27, indicating that calls far outnumber puts among options slated to expire within the next 3 months. Further pointing to bullish sentiment, during the past 10 trading days on the International Securities Exchange (ISE), investors have purchased more than 27 calls for every 1 put. This ratio ranks higher than 95.9% of all other readings taken during the past year, indicating option traders' recent affinity for optimistic bets.