The shares of General Electric (GE: sentiment, chart, options) were the center of some heavy option liquidation on Tuesday. Overall, more than 297,200 contracts crossed the tape, which is double the equity's average daily trading volume of 148,424 contracts, according to data from WhatsTrading.com. In addition, 82.5% of the volume changed hands on the call side.

Digging into the action in the front three months of options, we find that the December 15 call shed 4,000 positions, while the December 16 call added 3,000 new positions. In the January series, the 15 put shed 7,000 contracts, while the 17.50 call saw its open interest drop by 7,000 contracts.

Overall, options players are relatively optimistic when it comes to GE. The International Securities Exchange (ISE) has seen an increase in call trading, as 2.3 calls have been purchased to open for every one put purchased to open during the past 10 trading sessions. This ratio of calls to puts is higher than 91% of all those taken during the past year.

What's more, the Schaeffer's put/call open interest ratio comes in at 0.97, which is lower than 62% of all those taken during the past year. In other words, short-term options players have been more optimistically aligned toward the shares only 38% of the time during the past 12 months.