Get Ready for the Retracement: Analyst

Updated from 5:30 p.m. ET to include additional analyst commentary.

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- The theory that there's still plenty of money on the sidelines waiting for stocks to pull back in order to jump in could get tested soon.

Mark Arbeter, chief technical strategist at S&P Capital IQ, has been out with commentary for the past two weeks saying the S&P 500 is due for a swoon since surging more than 20% off the October lows, and he's not backing off now.

"We still believe that the stock market is in the process of tracing out a minor top within the confines of an intermediate-term uptrend," he wrote on Friday. "We see the major indices falling 3% to 5% over the next month, before resuming their uptrend, which we think will take the major averages to new recovery highs by the second half of the second quarter."

The great rally of 2012 has been a low-volume, churning affair. Triple-digit swings in the Dow Jones Industrial Average have been few and far between. Since Jan. 18, the VIX, Wall Street's so-called fear gauge, has only closed above 20 two times, and its finish on Thursday at 16.83 was its lowest since early July.