Those looking to stay in the financial markets may want to keep a steady supply of antacids nearby.
The stomach-churning volatility the market has seen in recent days likely isn't going anywhere—not with the Federal Reserve trying to prepare a graceful exit from monetary easing while a panoply of other concerns haunt investors.
Forget the "new normal," which bond giant Pimco defined as a long-term period of low growth. This looks like something different.
"It's going back to the old normal," said Quincy Krosby, chief market strategist at Prudential Annuities. "Markets have volatility and markets used to have pullbacks," she added. It's been more than two years since the S&P 500 has gone without at least a 10 percent correction.
"As we get closer to normalization by the Fed, which means the rising of rates, the market is going to demonstrate characteristics it always had, which included pullbacks and basically trying to decide what valuations should be," she added.
Old-fashioned price discovery indeed has become a relic in the time of unprecedented Fed easing. The central bank has expanded its balance sheet past the $4.5 trillion mark as it has injected liquidity into the markets and given new meaning to the old "don't fight the Fed" adage.
The S&P 500 has surged nearly 200 percent since the financial crisis on the back of the Fed's quantitative easing, but gains ahead could be harder to come by, or at least require more work on the part of investors.
The Fed is set to end QE later this month but probably will keep interest rates anchored near zero until well into 2015.