Deere & Co. (DE) has made an impressive recovery from this morning's loss of more than 12%. This morning, the company announced earnings fell 18% to $345 million, or 81 cents per share. The results included $50 million, or 8 cents per share, in expenses for the closing of a plant, but even without that cost earnings were below the 99 cents per share expected. Total revenue was up 21% to $7.4 billion, while equipment sales rose 24% to $6.74 billion, below Wall Street forecast for sales of $6.84 billion.

In addition, DE provided 2009 earnings forecast that was well below Wall Street estimates. The company expects 2009 net income of about $1.9 billion, down from the $2.05 billion in earning for the full fiscal year just ended. That translates to 2009 earnings of about $4.45 per share, below the consensus estimate of $5.48 per share.

Adding to the company's woes, Wachovia downgraded the shares from "outperform" to "market perform." The firm cited a "likelihood that the stock has limited upside potential from current levels in the intermediate term" as reason for downgrade.

The stock bounced back from its intraday low of $28.87 and is currently sitting on a gain of roughly a dime at $33.20. However, the security remains in a steep downtrend from its April peak of $94.89. The equity has fallen under resistance at its 10-week moving average, scoring only 1 weekly close above this trendline since mid-May.

Meanwhile, options players are extremely optimistic. The Schaeffer's put/call open interest ratio rests at 0.69, and is lower than 83% of all those taken during the past year. In other words, options players have been more optimistically aligned toward the stock just 17% of the time during the past year.

However, options speculators have shown a definite preference for puts this afternoon. The December 25 put has traded more than 3,400 contracts on open interest of roughly 2,000 contracts. Meanwhile, the most-active call is the December 35 call, with fewer than 2,000 contracts crossing the tape today. It appears that pessimism is finally on the rise toward DE.