KEY POINTS

• Rates are expected to stay higher for longer, an idea Fed officials have tried to get the market to accept and which investors are only now beginning to absorb.

• Getting used to a more typical rate structure doesn't sound like such a terrible thing. But after 15 years of living in an unnaturally low rate regime, normal sounds, well, abnormal.

• "All of this has to be assimilated and digested by the market," said Quincy Krosby of LPL Financial. "You can see that it's troubling and it's difficult."

That cracking sound in financial markets isn't the typical kind of break, where one asset class or another fractures and gives way. Instead, this is more a break in a narrative, one that has widespread repercussions.

The narrative in question is the one where the Federal Reserve holds interest rates low and everyone on Wall Street gets to enjoy the fruits.