Wall Street is a funny place. The concoction of fear, greed, a lot of money, and the potential to be humiliated at any time from a random event causes smart people to do silly things. While I often read analyst reports and tend to believe they can offer value for certain situations, every once in a while I come across a pretty bizarre upgrade or downgrade.

As Kevin Shult reported on BloggingStocks earlier, Hambrecht downgraded Akamai Technologies (NASDAQ: AKAM) from a buy to a hold. Normally I wouldn't really think much of such a subtle downgrade, but it seems like this downgrade goes against any logic.

If you look at the chart to the right, shares of Akamai have been killed during the last month. Off more than 40% from their highs, it would only seem logical that shares have become more attractive for new money than they were at a price 60% higher than the current quote.

But according to Hambrecht, this isn't the case. As I said before, this seems to go against any logic, especially if someone looks at a stock as a share in a business.

So why do I think they downgraded the stock? In my opinion, they probably wanted the poor performer off their buy list because it's currently humiliating them due to its poor performance. Once the stock trades back up 20-30%, they will re-add the stock to their buy list with the hopes of continued momentum.

Because Hambrecht's analyst covering Akamai seems like someone you should tune out, what should you do if you own Akamai or you're interested in buying Akamai?

I recently covered another content-delivery company called Limelight Networks (NASDAQ: LLNW). Throughout that post I tried to explain why I believe that the selling in Limelight is well overdone and the current price quote represents a buying opportunity. In my opinion, the situation in Akamai is very similar and the current price represents a buying opportunity.

Akamai has sold off for very similar reasons, most notably the recent price wars in the CDN space. Prior to the implosion of the CDN space, Akamai was a classic beat-and-raise story like Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU), a stock I covered here. While these stocks are great when they are in-gear, once their sector turns down the stocks get killed as growth-addicted momentum players shed the stock from their "aggressive growth" portfolios. This is usually when value-conscious investors become interested in these companies.

As it stands now, the stock is trading for less than 20x the earnings expectations for next year. I believe the company should easily grow earning faster than 20% during the next three years, and most analysts seem to believe the company should grow its earnings by 30%+ during this time frame.

The CDN/internet video space isn't dead. Internet video is becoming more prominent by the day -- heck, even BloggingStocks is launching a video section! Over the longer term, this space will regain its momentum and investors will fly back into these stocks. While Akamai offers greater value than Limelight, pessimism in Limelight still outweighs the pessimism in Akamai. As a result, Limelight should experience a more significant up-move if the sector regains its positive outlook. However, while Akamai is the lower-risk play (due to significant EPS support), it still offers significant return potential