After posting a gain of more than 10% during the regular session of trading, shares of E*Trade Financial (ETFC: sentiment, chart, options) were halted in electronic trading just ahead of the company's second-quarter earnings report. For the quarter, ETFC posted a net loss of $94.6 million, or 19 cents per share. The loss was wider than expected, with the consensus on Wall Street looking for a loss of 14 cents per share. E*Trade noted that losses in its mortgage portfolio were a bit higher than expected, but that loan delinquency growth continued to moderate.

Heading into the report, call volume spiked for ETFC's August 4 and 5 strikes. Specifically, the August 4 call saw more than 6,300 contracts change hands on open interest of 24,595 contracts, while volume at the August 5 call totaled 3,179 contracts on open interest of 3,529. This attention to potentially bullish bets on ETFC runs counter to recent near-term activity, as the stock's Schaeffer's put/call open interest ratio (SOIR) of 0.47 ranks above 63% of all those taken during the past year.

Pessimism was also prevalent among short sellers and analysts, as the security's short-to-float ratio rests at a whopping 27.4%, while all 11 brokerage firms following ETFC rate the shares a "hold" or worse. It will be interesting to see if tonight's miss on the earnings front translates into heavy selling pressure tomorrow - especially considering the spike in call activity from options players.