The stock market's decline in recent days represents a correction, not the start of a bear market, says Tobias Levkovich, chief equity strategist at Citigroup.
The S&P 500 slid 2.4 percent Thursday through Monday, and the Nasdaq Composite tumbled 4.6 percent. Both indices rebounded a bit Tuesday.
"To a great degree what we've seen is high-growth momentum stocks reversing direction," Levkovich told Yahoo.
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Some market participants have overreacted to the selling, he said. Much of it represent investors shifting to large-cap stocks from small-caps and to value stocks from growth stocks—a flight to quality, Levkovich said.
The biotechnology, social media and cloud-computing sectors have started "to lose what had been a small, little bubble forming," he said.
Levkovich doesn't expect stocks to suffer a huge drop. A 5 to 10 percent decline would be typical and healthy, he said. Levkovich anticipates such a move in the first half of this year, but not a bear market.
He predicts the S&P 500 will end the year at 1,975. That would represent a 7 percent gain for 2014, matching Levkovich's earnings forecast.
The S&P 500 stood at 1,849.15 late Tuesday.
Meanwhile, star real estate investor Sam Zell, chairman of Equity Group Investments, says there has been a disconnect between the stock market's strong rally of the past year and the economy's moderate growth.
"I have been pretty consistent that I didn't think the market was reflective of the economy," he told CNBC. "And that is still very much the case." The S&P 500 produced a total return of 32.4 percent last year, while GDP expanded 1.9 percent.
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