The shares of Canadian Solar Inc. (CSIQ: sentiment, chart, options) were greeted with an early downgrade this morning, with AmTech Research slashing its rating on the stock to "neutral" from "buy."

After a brief respite atop intermediate-term resistance last week, the security is now poised to finish the week beneath its 10-week moving average a trendline that's capped all but a couple of CSIQ's rally attempts since June 2008. At last check, the shares were flirting with an 11.8% deficit, hovering near the 5 level.

However, despite the solar sultan underperforming the S&P 500 Index (SPX) by about 55% during the past 60 trading sessions, options players are becoming increasingly optimistic toward the equity. During the past 10 days on the International Securities Exchange (ISE), CSIQ has seen more than 13 times as many calls than puts bought to open. This lofty ratio ranks in the 92nd annual percentile, suggesting that options speculators have scooped up calls at a faster pace only 8% of the time during the past year.

The recent bias toward bullish bets is further demonstrated by the stock's Schaeffer's put/call open interest ratio of 0.26, implying that calls nearly quadruple their put rivals among near-term options. This reading, when compared to similar readings during the past 52 weeks, registers only 6 percentage points from an annual optimistic climax.