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Brazilian oil giant Petrobras held its ground yesterday, and the bulls are looking for a rally.

optionMONSTER's monitoring systems detected the purchase of about 16,000 October 24 calls for $0.14 to $0.18. Volume was more than 5 times open interest at the strike, indicating that new long positions were initiated.

Buying calls locks in the purchase price for the stock, so they can generate some nice leverage in the event of a rally. However, they will expire worthless if the stock doesn't move. (See our Education section)

PBR fell more than 4 percent early in the session after reporting its first quarterly loss in 13 years. Management later assured investors that costs would ease, causing the shares to close with a 0.54 percent gain at $20.44.

The stock has lost more than one-quarter of its value in the last year amid concerns about the global economy and negativity toward Brazil. In the last two weeks, however, it's been consolidating above its 50-day moving average, which could be leading some chart watchers to believe that it will now rebound.

While investors have been aggressively targeting energy names recently, most of those trades have focused on smaller U.S. companies. That makes the PBR activity especially noteworthy.

Overall option volume was quadruple the daily average yesterday, with calls outnumbering puts by 3 to 1.

(A version of this post appeared on InsideOptions Pro yesterday.)

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