The shares of Ashland (ASH: sentiment, chart, options) are down nearly 7% this morning after KeyBanc downgraded the security from "hold" to "underweight." Ahead of today's downgrade, Zacks showed that the equity had earned 2 "strong buys" and 2 "holds," leaving ample room for additional downgrades from Wall Street.

The stock could also be hit with price-target cuts. According to Thomson Financial, the average 12-month price target for ASH stands at $21.00, which implies that analysts are expecting the shares to rally more than 90% during the next year.

Options players also have high hopes for ASH. The Schaeffer's put/call open interest ratio for ASH stands at 0.43, as call open interest more than doubles put open interest among near-term options. This ratio is also lower than 89% of all those taken during the past 52 weeks, indicating that investors have been more optimistically aligned just 11% of the time during the past year.

Technically speaking, it appears that the shares of ASH have once again been rejected by resistance at the 12 level. This area has capped the stock since late November.