Nordic American Tanker Shipping (NYSE: NAT - option chain) stock is falling today after the company announced a public offering of 4 million common shares priced at $32 per share. That price represented an 11% discount to the stock's Tuesday closing price.

If you think this stock won't be rising too far in the coming months, then it could be a good time to look at a bearish hedged play on NAT.

This morning, NAT opened at $32.42. So far today the stock has hit a low of $32.00 and a high of $33.09. As of 11:35, NAT is trading at $32.04, down $4.04 (-11.2%). The chart for NAT looks bullish.

For a bearish hedged play on this stock, I would consider an October bear-call credit spread above the $40 range. A bear-call credit spread is an options position that combines the purchase and sale of call options to hedge risk in case the stock doesn't do what you think but still leverage nice returns.

For this particular trade, we will make a 6.4% return in five months as long as NAT is below $40 at October expiration. Nordic American would have to rise by more than 24% before we would start to lose money. Learn more about this type of trade here.

NAT hasn't been above $40 since August and has shown resistance around $38 recently.

Brent Archer is an options analyst and writer at Investors Observer.

DISCLOSURE: Mr. Archer owns and/or controls diversified portfolios of long and short stock and option positions that may include holdings in companies he writes about. At publication time, Brent neither owns nor controls positions in NAT.