Barton Biggs, a managing director with Traxis Partners, dismissed Thursday's sell-off as "another Wall Street flash crash panic" and said that, despite the recent spate of weak data, he still believes the U.S. economy could show real growth over the next couple of quarters.

"I'm sorry I can't get bearish here," Biggs told CNBC Friday. "There's too much fear and too much panic selling. There's too much momentum-oriented selling, and I don't think the global economy's going to collapse.

Tight stop-loss limits and high frequency trading contributed to the selling once the market started to cascade downward, Biggs said.

"This another Wall Street flash crash panic, and I think it's overdone," he said. "Any long-term investor ought to be buying stock."

Art Cashin, director of floor operations for USB Financial Services, has also called the market's steep drop "a classical technical breakdown" and said high frequency trading was contributing to the decline.