This morning, the shares of Ciena (CIEN: sentiment, chart, options) were upgraded at JMP Securities from "underperform" to "market perform." The firm stated that the bleeding may be near an end. While risks remain, the weakening industry fundamentals are now partially discounted into the stock price, the brokerage firm believes.

The positive comments have done little to support the shares today. The stock is down 1.86% this afternoon and has hit a new annual low of $20.72. The security has been locked in a steep downtrend from its October 2007 high of $49.55, falling more than 58%. What's more, the stock has fallen below former key support in the 22 area a region that halted the stock's pullback in January 2008.

Meanwhile, options players are extremely optimistic about the stock's sentiment backdrop. The Schaeffer's put/call open interest ratio rests at 0.41, as call open interest more than doubles put open interest among near-term options. This reading is lower than 96% of those taken during the past 52 weeks. In other words, options players have been more optimistically aligned only 4% of the time during the past year. This combination of lingering optimism amid the stock's downtrend has bearish implications from a contrarian perspective.