Earlier today I noted some concerns on Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS). That spurred me to dig up some comments I made last month. In that post I noted the shares were in a position to challenge some historic levels. Below is the updated monthly chart from that post.

Chart Courtesy of Thomson Financial

Shares of GS were trading near 82 but the point of interest was the low near 55 that followed the IPO. With regard to that, I said -

"It looks like the low following the IPO was near 55, which is more than 30% below current levels. Under normal market conditions, mentioning a price so far away would seem absurd. However, these are not normal market conditions. Moves happen in the blink of an eye. If the October lows are violated here, the all-time low would be the last line in the sand, an important line. If that gets hit, that effectively means that anyone who bought the stock since the IPO is sitting on a loss. "

As is stands now, that support has held on a monthly closing basis, but clearly there is some serious selling pressure at work here. What is curious about the concerns currently being bandied about is that option players still haven't shown much in the way of overt skepticism. Last month we saw that the put/call ratio showed open interest for calls had been steady outpacing open interest for puts. The chart to the right shows that we have seen a more balanced interest in calls and puts recently, but that is hardly an influx of pessimism.

Another point of interest from the options arena concerns the front-month open interest configuration. The stock is holding just above the peak put strike at 60, which is home to a little over 20,000 contracts. In theory (explained here) this would be viewed as support.

On both an intermediate- and longer-term basis, shares of Goldman Sachs are oversold. However, the stock so far has shown little ability to bounce. Given the current concerns, I would continue to keep a wary eye on this stock if it breaks the technical and options-relate support.