U.S. stock investors take a breather, the market is nearing its bottom, Jeffrey Saut, chief investment strategist at Raymond James, said Friday.
"Our timing models call for a low between Aug. 13 and Aug. 18, with a plus-or–minus three-day margin of error, so today it feels like capitulation," Saut said in an interview on CNBC's " Squawk Box."
Saut made his remarks after U.S. equities recorded their worst trading day in about a year and a half. The Dow Jones industrial average fell nearly 360 points, while the S&P 500 turned negative for the year, as a massive fall in oil and global growth concerns weighed on investor sentiment.
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"We're nearing the bottom. We knifed through the July support yesterday. It was pretty ugly. You would look for some kind of bottom either sometime today or the middle of next week," Saut added.
"I've been in this business for over 45 years and I've seen this act before," he said. "It's kind of like pornography. You know it when you see it."
Todd Gordon, founder of Tradinganalysis.com, also said in the same interview that investors need to relax.
"What has happened really? Has any real damage been done to the uptrend in the market? I'm not so sure. I mean, we have China falling down, emerging markets are seriously on the brink of another extended leg down, but there's a lot of talk that the [upward] trend has been broken, and I don't think there's any significant technical damage done," Gordon said.
"The stock market has done nothing but flatten out, which has allowed those longer-term moving averages to kind of play catch-up," he added.
Nevertheless, Saut of Raymond James also said it has been a while since he's observed so much alarm in the market. "I have not seen this much fear since the spring of 2009, and we're only 4.5 percent off of the highs," he said.