Shares of homebuilder D.R. Horton, Inc. (DHI: sentiment, chart, options) got a boost from an upgrade at Citigroup and some stronger-than-anticipated housing data on Monday, which helped fuel a flood of option activity on the stock. During the course of the session, the equity saw about 19,500 calls change hands, nearly tripling its average daily volume of fewer than 7,500 bullishly oriented bets.

The stock's near-the-money December 11 call was most active, with roughly 10,200 contracts crossing the tape. At 9:40 a.m. Eastern, a block of 4,500 contracts traded at the ask price of $0.50, suggesting they were purchased. Nevertheless, the out-of-the-money 12 strike remains home to peak call open interest in the front-month series, with about 15,100 contracts outstanding.

Looking ahead to the January 2010 series of options, it seems call traders have higher hopes for DHI. The stock's January 12.50 call saw almost 3,250 contracts traded yesterday, with 47% changing hands at the ask price. Meanwhile, the deeper-out-of-the-money January 15 call saw single-session volume of nearly 2,300 contracts – 84% of which traded at the ask price. However, the in-the-money 10 strike still harbors the most open call positions in the back-month series, with 11,639 contracts in residence.

The bullish bias in the options arena is visible in DHI's Schaeffer's put/call open interest ratio (SOIR) of 0.75, which ranks in the 18th annual percentile. In other words, short-term speculators have been more optimistically aligned toward DHI only 18% of the time during the past 52 weeks.

At last check, DHI has backpedaled 1.6% to linger in the $10.50 area.

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