Cisco Systems ( NASDAQ: CSCO) has dropped 9.4% over the past week. That's seven times worse than the S&P 500's 1.28% decline over the same period. Yet Wall Street analysts still see the stock climbing to an average target of $88.81, implying roughly 16% upside from current levels. The question: is this a buying opportunity or are analysts missing something the market already knows?
On August 20, 2011, legendary venture capitalist Marc Andreessen published a blog post-and an accompanying essay in The Wall Street Journal-that would become the sacred texts of the Silicon Valley bull run. Titled "Why Software Is Eating The World," he argued that the global economy was undergoing a "dramatic and broad technological and economic shift" and that software companies were poised to take over large swathes of the industry.