American Express Company (AXP: sentiment, chart, options) announced this afternoon that it has received preliminary approval from the U.S. Treasury Department to get about $3.39 billion in funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). In return for the funds, the company will issue preferred stock and warrants to purchase shares of common stock for up to 15% of the funding amount. American Express said the preferred shares will pay 5% annual dividends for the first 5 years and then 9% annually.

At last check, the shares of AXP were down 0.76%, up slightly from their session lows. The security has been stuck in a steep downtrend from its July highs, falling under resistance from its 10-week and 20-week moving averages. The equity is currently testing support in the 17-18 region.

Not surprisingly, options players are extremely pessimistic when it comes to this underperformer. The Schaeffer's put/call open interest ratio rests at 1.34, as put open interest outweighs call open interest among near-term options. This reading is higher than 94% of all those taken during the past 52 weeks. In other words, short-term options players have been more pessimistic toward the shares just 6% of the time.

AXP could also be hit with fresh downgrades. Only 9 of the 18 analysts following AXP rate it a "sell."