In light of all of the headwinds buffeting the global economy in 2011, it was a bad year to own richly-valued stocks. High-flying names such as Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX) fell 79.5% before a recent rebound, while Open Table (Nasdaq: OPEN) fell about 73% its peak seen last spring.

Add software provider Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM) to the mix. Back in June, I warned shares looked ripe for a pullback. And sure enough, they’ve tumbled 30% since then.

The Wall Street analysts who follow the company say the sell-off is unjustified, and they anticipate a steady rebound back toward the $160 mark.

I think they’re misguided.

They are simply extrapolating past growth rates into the future, a fallacy that has tripped up many stocks before. I see shares falling another 30% toward the $70 mark and caution you not to look at the recent pullback as a buying opportunity.

Salesforce.com helps manage sales leads and relationships on a cloud-based database. It remains an impressive growth story. Sales grew in excess of 75% annually in fiscal (January) 2004 through fiscal 2006, grew at least 40% in each of the following two years,  and have been growing a solid 20-25% since then, on an organic basis. The trend is easy to spot: Growth has been steadily slowing.

A few recent acquisitions that were closed in recent quarters should help total sales grow 25% to 30% in the fiscal year that begins this February (to a sales base of around $2.9 billion), but core growth is likely to be just above or below the 20% mark. As is the case with many tech stocks that came before, great growth is the norm — until it stops.

Simply put, nobody knows how large the company’s addressable market really is. Analysts simply look to hear management’s take on what near-term demand looks like. And they simply project performance in the future at rates seen in the past. They seemingly ignored the fact that Salesforce.com’s billings (which is a key measure of new business) not only trailed consensus forecasts by around 5% in the quarter ended October 2011, but also showed a deceleration of growth from the prior quarter.

Management — and the analysts who follow the company — contend that the shortfall is just a blip, and will soon be forgotten. Yet there’s an old saying on Wall Street that “The first miss is rarely the last.” That’s not to suggest Salesforce.com will deliver another subpar quarter when it reports in late February. But it is to say  that a few more weak ones could well pop over the course of 2012. A stock that trades at 60 times forward earnings can’t afford too many stumbles.

But there’s another more prosaic reason why investors should be concerned about this stock. That concern is Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL).

The software giant released fiscal second-quarter results just before Christmas that  should be a wake-up call for all tech stocks — especially those that carry lofty price-to-earnings (P/E) multiples. Oracle trailed profit forecasts by about 5% for the first time in three years (and only the second time in the past six years). This is a company that establishes a reasonable set of expectations and invariably exceeds them.

But not this time.

If Oracle’s weak quarter is a sign of spending pressures in technology, then it’s hard to see how Salesforce.com can keep growing at a fast pace. In the next two quarters, analysts expect to see sales grow 36% to $620 million and 31% to $660 million, respectively. But this can’t happen if IT budgets are getting tighter and tighter. It may only be a matter of time before Salesforce.com’s current shareholders realize their stakes carry a lot more risk than reward. So the selling we’ve seen in recent months could continue into 2012.

Risks to Consider:  A rising tide lifts all boats, so a firmer stock market in the first months of 2012 would help investors grow comfortable owing high P/E stocks such as Salesfore.com

Action to Take –> If you look to short the stock, then be prepared for a quick upward move in the shares if the January quarter comes in ahead of expectations. Stay the course. It still appears to be a matter of time before investors start to unload this richly-priced stock, which may soon see slowing growth from budding macroeconomic pressures.