U.S. stocks have posted two straight down days in a row, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had its biggest drop in five weeks, and small-caps (once again) are bearing the brunt of the selling. Right about now, you may be thinking about a number of things: Is this the Big One? Did I really think Twitter 's financial statements didn’t matter? Who thought it was a good idea to do another Godzilla remake?

But, has anything really changed? Doesn’t seem like it, not from where we’re sitting. Growth in the biggest economic zones – Europe, the U.S., China – is weak, even with central banks in the first two moving heaven and earth to try and spur activity. Five years after the official end of the U.S. recession, the world’s biggest economy continues to struggle to build up self-sustaining economic growth, Europe is crawling out of recession, and we do mean crawling, and China continues to see a slowdown. The Fed has been signaling the end of QE3 since this time last year, and has been whittling its bond program down since January.

What’s changed may be perceptions more than anything else. We’re halfway through May, nearly halfway through 2014, and the growth that everybody expected simply isn’t showing. The breakout hasn’t come, and we remain trapped in a slow growth, high debt, low inflation malaise.

Part of the reason that perceptions have been slow to change is the belief, reinforced by countless speeches from officials, that the Fed’s current policy – winding down QE3 – does not represent a tightening of monetary policy. “Tapering is not tightening,” as the hip kids say. If you don’t buy this notion, however, the market’s gyrations start to make sense.

Stocks rolled over after the Fed’s first two QE programs ended back in 2010 and 2011, noted Lindsey Group’s Peter Boockvar, and the Treasury market’s yield curve flattened as well. “I believe this is not a flow story,” he wrote in a note to clients, “it is a bet on where economic growth trends from here just as it was those previous two times and we cannot separate the market action from what the Fed is trying to accomplish on policy right now.”

Still, we’ve been through this drill before. The market rumbles, people start to wonder if this is the big one, there’s a modest shake-out, and the market goes back off on its merry way. One of these days that script won’t play out, one of these days it won’t be a modest shake-out. The trick everybody’s trying to pull off is knowing the difference.

The comments earlier this week from fund manager David Tepper, which can be summed up in the pithy “don’t be too frickin’ long” comment, reflect the market’s anxiety, Mark Newton, the chief technical analyst at Greywolf Execution Partners, wrote. With so many people, once again, looking for the Big One, it’s likely to take a contrarian turn against them (which will certainly make the bulls happy).

“Despite today’s pullback,” he said, “my thinking is this simply is a period of above-average downside volatility like what has happened frequently in this period in May near the NYSE anniversary, and that bearish sentiment will provide a floor to this sell-off by next week.”