Bulls Ante Up as Upgrade Boosts Coach, Inc. (COH)

Coach Inc (NYSE:COH) is up nearly 3% this afternoon to trade at $42.92, after Oppenheimer boosted its assessment of the stock to "outperform" from "perform." This isn't lost on option bulls, with calls crossing at more than two times the rate typically seen at this point in the day.

COH's most active strike by far is the May 44 call, which is seeing buy-to-open action. By initiating these positions, the speculators expect the shares will muscle atop $44 by the close on Friday, May 15, when the options expire. Historically speaking, the stock hasn't explored these levels since last May.

Regardless, COH has been on a technical tear for a while. Since 2015 kicked off, the equity has added more than 14%, and earlier today saw the north side of $43 for the first time in roughly 10 months. What's more, the stock has outperformed the broader S&P 500 Index (SPX) by 11.3 percentage points during the previous 40 sessions.

As such, bullish betting has picked up on Coach Inc (NYSE:COH) in recent weeks. The security's 10-day International Securities Exchange (ISE), Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), and NASDAQ OMX PHLX (PHLX) call/put volume ratio checks in at 3.75 -- compared to 1.58 at the end of the January. On top of that, the current ratio outranks 79% of all other readings from the last year.