Despite a bout of bearish brokerage news this morning, the shares of Apple Inc. (AAPL: sentiment, chart, options) have trended higher along with the broad market today.

More specifically, investors have seemingly ignored the latest analyst action from Argus, with the brokerage firm slashing its price target on AAPL by $10 to $145. Analyst Wendy Abramowitz also reportedly lowered her fiscal first-quarter earnings estimate for AAPL to $1.52 per share from $1.54 per share.

Instead, traders are likely turning their attention to the highly anticipated Macworld expo, slated to kick off on Monday. Friedman, Billings & Ramsey analyst Craig Berger recently said the tech titan could be planning to introduce a more budget-friendly iPhone nano, as well as a smaller iPod shuffle, according to reports. Apple followers are also eager to see how senior vice president Phil Schiller - not Steve Jobs - delivers the keynote speech on Tuesday (though some on the Street aren't giving up hope that Jobs could make a surprise cameo.)

Further underscoring the optimism heading into the expo is the latest data from the International Securities Exchange (ISE). During the past 10 trading sessions, more than twice as many AAPL calls than puts have been bought to open. What's more, this lofty ratio registers in the 95th annual percentile, suggesting that options traders on the exchange have scooped up calls at a faster pace only 5% of the time during the past year.

In today's trading, AAPL's January 2009 90 call is most popular, with more than 15,000 contracts changing hands on open interest of roughly 30,000. Meanwhile, the equity's January 2009 95 call has seen almost 12,000 contracts cross the tape on open interest of fewer than 25,000.

At last check, the shares of AAPL are poised to close the first session of 2009 with a gain of $4.80, or 5.6%, around the round-number 90 level. However, despite today's surge higher, the security remains pressured beneath resistance at its 10-week moving average a trendline that's capped all but 1 of the equity's rally attempts since mid-August. Should the stock get smacked lower by resistance, a reversal in sentiment among options players could place additional selling pressure on the shares.