Investors gearing up for the first Federal Reserve policy meeting chaired by Ben Bernanke have a lot of questions. The most important, of course, is how much longer will the Fed keep raising rates?

Certainly, there is no doubt about what the central bank will do at the end of its two-day meeting on Tuesday. According to futures contracts on the Chicago Board of Trade, investors are pricing in a 100 percent chance of getting at least a quarter-percentage point rate increase at the March 27-28 meeting.


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Yet, as has been the case over the past few years, "the question is not what they (the central bankers) do, but what they say in the statement and how they say it," said Stephen Stanley, chief economist at RBS Capital.

"A few weeks ago, the market was looking for a hike in March and May, but there have been some data points recently that have thrown May into question," RBS Capital's Stanley said, including last week's milder-than-expected rise in the core Consumer Price index, a key measure of inflation.

The Fed has stated that it's raising rates to keep inflation in check, but some critics are concerned that if the central bank keeps raising, it risks slowing the economy. Some market observers also note that rates are now nearing a so-called "neutral" level that should neither encourage inflation nor hinder economic growth.