NEW YORK (Bloomberg) — More financial advisers are predicting a so-called correction in the US stock market than at any other time in almost a decade, according to Investors Intelligence.The percentage of newsletter writers who said they expect a 10 percent slide in US stocks during the next 12 months jumped to 32.6 percent last week, New Rochelle, New York-based Investors Intelligence said. That's up from 25.8 percent a week earlier and the highest since August 1997, when the Asian financial crisis roiled stock markets world-wide.

The Standard and Poor's 500 Index last had a slide of at least 10 percent from a peak four years ago, when the index tumbled 15 percent before the US invasion of Iraq. From that trough, the S&P 500 surged 92 percent to a record on June 4.

"The market is due to pull back a little bit," said Alan Lancz, president of Alan B. Lancz & Associates in Toledo, Ohio. "Any kind of significant pullback should be used as a buying opportunity because there's a huge amount of cash on the sidelines."

The percentage of bullish, or optimistic, writers fell to 49.4 percent, the lowest since March, from 53.8 percent, according to the newsletter. Bearish, or pessimistic, writers slipped to 18 percent, the lowest since July 2004, from 20.4 percent.

The gap between bullish and bearish sentiment narrowed to 31.4 percentage points from 33.4 percentage points. Investors Intelligence, which compiles its survey from about 120 newsletter writers, considers a 10 percentage-point spread "normal."

Some technical analysts, who try to predict stock moves based on statistics such as price patterns and volume, track investor sentiment as a contrarian indicator.

Investors fled Asia after Thailand's baht devaluation in July 1997, setting off a plunge in other currencies that had been propped up through fixed exchange-rate regimes. South Korea, Indonesia and Malaysia were among the first affected, with the crisis spreading to South America and Russia.

The S&P 500 was little changed last week amid heightened concern that losses from loans to the riskiest borrowers will mount, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained, capping its biggest quarterly advance since 2003.

The S&P 500 added 0.79, or less than 0.1 percent, to 1503.35 last week. The Dow average increased 48.36, or 0.4 percent, to 13,408.62. Its 8.5 percent advance in the second quarter was the most since the final three months of 2003. The Nasdaq Composite Index rose 14.27, or 0.6 percent, to 2603.23 last week.