Despite plunging nearly 53% during the past year, Barnes & Noble, Inc. (BKS: sentiment, chart, options) is up more than 10% today, after Goldman Sachs analyst Matthew J. Fassler said in a note to investors that "ongoing challenges" at Borders Group, Inc. (BGP: sentiment, chart, options), BKS's main rival, could benefit Barnes & Noble. (BGP said today that sales during the 9-week holiday period fell nearly 12%.) Additionally, the analyst upgraded the shares of BKS from "sell" to "neutral."

BKS has trailed the S&P 500 Index (SPX) by nearly 44% during the past 60 trading days, yet short-term option players are optimistic. The stock's Schaeffer's put/call open interest ratio (SOIR) of 0.75 indicates that calls outnumber puts among near-term options. Furthermore, this ratio ranks lower than 69% of all similar readings in the past 52 weeks, which means that short-term option players have been more bullishly aligned less than one-third of the time during the past year.

On the other side, short sellers have clearly jumped on this downward slip. These bears have sold short more than 8.56 million shares, accounting for an impressive 23.25% of the company's float.

Furthermore, most of the brokerage firms are sitting in the bears' camp. According to Zacks, 1 brokerage firm recommends "strong buy," while the other 5 suggest "hold" or worse.
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