NEW YORK, March 20, 2026, 6:04 PM EDT
Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO) slipped $0.85 to end at $77.65 Friday, caught up in a technology rout that dragged the S&P 500 to lows not seen since September. The action was heavy—over 90.3 million Cisco shares changed hands, quadrupling its usual three-month volume. Triple witching was in play, with the quarterly expiration of stock and index derivatives contracts adding to the churn.
Investors had been counting on Cisco to ride the AI infrastructure boom, with its gear—switches, routers, optics—powering data flow in giant AI data centers. But shares slipped Friday, as concerns over oil, inflation, and rates took center stage, sidelining the bullish AI narrative despite Cisco and Nvidia rolling out expanded enterprise AI plans earlier this week.
Friday’s selloff stretched well beyond Cisco. The Nasdaq dropped 2.01%. Jake Dollarhide, chief executive at Longbow Asset Management, pointed out that investors seemed to be coming to terms with the idea that the Middle East conflict might drag on “beyond several months.” ING’s Padhraic Garvey described the climate as one of “higher inflation expectations” driven by oil. Reuters
Even so, Cisco fared better than several high-profile AI peers. Nvidia shed 3.1%, Broadcom dropped 2.8%, and Arista Networks tumbled 3.7%. Cisco, by comparison, ended up looking like a safer bet for the session.
A late-Thursday SEC filing turned up a new detail on Cisco’s insider moves. The company’s Chief Legal Officer, Deborah Stahlkopf, reported selling 7,981 shares on March 17, fetching a weighted average of $79.503. The sale ran through a Rule 10b5-1 plan, which lets execs unload stock automatically according to preset instructions.
Cisco is still pushing the growth story. On March 16, as Nvidia’s GTC was underway, Chief Executive Chuck Robbins pointed to customers aiming to roll out AI “safely and at scale.” IDC analyst Mary Johnston Turner described it as an “inflection point,” with real-time AI workloads getting closer to the source—factory floors, hospital sites, and similar settings. Cisco Newsroom
Cisco’s case leans on numbers the company reported last month: It bumped up its outlook for fiscal 2026 revenue, now targeting between $61.2 billion and $61.7 billion. AI infrastructure? Management expects over $3 billion in revenue from hyperscalers—big cloud players—this year. Still, fatter memory bills kept margins tight. “Compressed margins” dulled the quarter, said Jake Behan, head of capital markets at Direxion. Reuters
Cisco risks getting stuck in a narrative limbo. Nvidia’s bullish AI outlook, flagged as a sign of “durable demand” by Emarketer analyst Jacob Bourne, puts a spotlight on infrastructure names—yet Cisco just cautioned that some of its newly announced products could still face shifting timelines. If oil prices hold up and rate jitters intensify, fund managers might decide Cisco looks less like an AI play and more like a tech name to trim when sentiment sours. Reuters
