This morning, Oppenheimer issued bearish brokerage notes on the industrial sector, but reiterated its "outperform" rating on Honeywell International Inc. (HON: sentiment, chart, options). Investors seemed to shake off the notes, and took advantage of the reiteration, as at last look, HON was trading up nearly 5%.

Technically speaking, the stock has lost 57% since its May highs, and has been stair-stepping lower since mid October. The 28 region, which is home to both the security's 20-day and 30-day moving averages, could prove to be a technical hurdle for the equity, if it is able to ride this bought of good fortune higher.

Despite the stock trailing the S&P 500 Index (SPX) by almost 12% during the past 60 days, brokerage firms are still extremely positive. In fact, Zacks reports that 75% of the analysts rating the shares rate them a "buy" or better. Furthermore, the stock's average 12-month price target is listed by Thomson Financial at $47.75, a 61% premium to yesterdays closing price.

Additionally, short-term option players are also optimistic on HON. The Schaeffer's put/call open interest ratio (SOIR) for the shares stands at 0.62. This means there are more calls than puts among options that expire in less than 3 months. What's more, this reading is lower than 71% of all those taken during the past 52 weeks. In other words, short-term option speculators have been more bullishly aligned only 29% of the time during the past year.

However, while brokerage firms seem to be growing more bullish toward the downtrending shares, option players are becoming more pessimistic. In fact, during the past 10 days on the International Securities Exchange (ISE), the ratio of puts bought to open compared to calls bought to open, is ranked higher than 70% of all other readings taken during the past year, pointing to investor's recent affinity for puts over calls.

Overall, followers of HON should be cautious of the high amount of bullish sentiment surrounding the shares. If the stock is unable to overcome the resistance at the 28 level, it could endure a fresh bought of selling pressure, pushing the stock lower.