So far today, shares of First Solar (FSLR: sentiment, chart, options) have jumped more than 8%, riding higher on the heels of some positive analyst coverage this morning. Specifically, Ardour Capital Investment issued a "strong buy" on FSLR, following last week's post-earnings upgrades from Merriman Curhan Ford and Soleil. Furthermore, Jim Cramer stated in last night's edition of Mad Money that FSLR would be a "top pick" if Senator Barack Obama wins today's presidential election. According to Cramer, renewable energy companies should perform better under an Obama administration, as the Senator has promised as much as $150 billion over the next 10 years toward the sector.

Options activity has been skewed toward the call side following the comments. The most active call is FSLR's deep out-of-the-money November 230 strike, with volume of more than 2,470 contracts on open interest of just 747 contracts. Meanwhile, the most active put has been the deep out-of-the-money November 110 strike, with volume of 2,300 contracts on open interest of 1,053 contracts.

Looking at FSLR's Schaeffer's put/call open interest ratio (SOIR), it is clear that the bears still hold sway as the current reading of 1.30 indicates that puts easily outnumber calls among options with less than 3 months until expiration. What's more, this reading falls in the 80th percentile of its annual range, indicating that options traders have been more bearish toward FSLR only 20% of the time in the prior 52 weeks. Should this pessimistic sentiment begin to unravel, we could see the shares continue their march higher over the short-to-intermediate term.