Merrill Lynch (MER, news, chart) is seeing bearish order flow after Goldman Sachs analyst William Tanona whacked MER with a Sell rating. The analyst expects Merrill to incur fresh write downs in addition to the $5.7 billion announced in July. Shares of Merrill Lynch are down 47 cents to $25.74 and 46,000 MER puts have traded, or roughly four times the number of calls. The January puts with the 10 strike (yikes) are the most actives. Today’s volume of 21,041 contracts includes an order for 10,000 hitting offerside for 36 cents and 7,200 contracts also askside for 38 cents.