NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - As a volatile January draws to a close, stock investors are set to face the new year's most action-packed week yet. Get ready.

Stocks rallied at the end of last week on strong trading volume, as investors recovered from a scary mid-January selloff. But that hardly puts the bulls in the clear, even for the short term, amid next week's big hurdles.

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Federal Reserve policy makers meet Tuesday, and are widely expected to boost the Fed funds rate, a key short-term interest rate, by a quarter-percentage point to 4.5 percent. It would mark the 14th consecutive rate hike since June of 2004.

Friday's weak fourth-quarter gross domestic product growth (GDP) report notwithstanding, many of the recent economic data have been upbeat, and there has been little to suggest the Fed will pause as soon as next week.

However, as always, investors will be glued to the statement for hints about how the central bank may act in the future.

In particular, a future without the maestro, Chairman Alan Greenspan, who ends his more-than-18-year tenure following the meeting. Former Fed governor Ben Bernanke has been tapped to take over and many investors are hoping that he may bring an end, or at least a pause, to the rate-hike campaign. They will be looking to Tuesday's statement for hints. (Full story).

They may be disappointed, said William Hummer, principal at Wayne Hummer Inc.

"The statement will be business as usual, portraying a strong economy, but not suggesting the much ballyhooed end to rate hikes some investors have been looking for," Hummer said.

Hummer said that the Fed is bound to raise rates at the first Bernanke-led meeting in March, but not because the new kid will need to prove that he's tough on inflation.

"I think they'll raise because they'll need to," he added. "The economy continues to do well and they're not ready to let up yet.

Last week's GDP report was surprisingly weak, but analysts say that may be something of an aberration.

"It doesn't look like what happened with GDP in the fourth quarter is a harbinger of the future," said Michael Darda, chief economist at MKM Partners.

He noted that a big part of the problem related to auto sales, and that industrial production was booming in the quarter, as was manufacturing.

These factors, combined with signs of improving business spending in the quarter and a recovering labor market all seem to suggest a strong economy in the first quarter, Darda said.

Reports next week cover those areas of the economy and should paint a more positive picture than that of the GDP report, he said, in particular, Friday's January employment report.

If nothing else, the week ahead is bound to be extremely volatile, said Paul Mendelsohn, president of Windham Financial Services.

In addition to the Fed, "it's a busy week for market-moving economic news," he added. "You also have an OPEC meeting and of course more earnings."

The period of reporting quarterly earnings got off to a shaky start, with a number of household name corporations offering either results or forecasts that disappointed some investors. But last week, the earnings picture improved, notably with strong results Friday from Microsoft (Research) and Procter & Gamble (Research).

That upward trend will need to continue in the week ahead to support stocks, the analysts said.

Mendelsohn said he is concerned that the stock market essentially is still stuck in a trading range. However, he said that he was encouraged by the recent inflow of new money into previously-oversold sectors, like healthcare.

"New money coming into the market is very positive," he said, "if they can take that and push through the resistance."

• Monday: the December reads on personal income and personal spending.
• Tuesday: the FOMC meeting; the January Consumer Confidence report; the January Chicago PMI -- a regional read on manufacturing.
• Wednesday: the December read on construction spending; the January ISM index -- a national read on manufacturing; the weekly oil inventories report.
• Thursday: the first read on productivity in the fourth-quarter; the weekly jobless claims report.
• Friday: the January employment report; the revised read on consumer sentiment from the University of Michigan; the December factory orders report; the January ISM Services index.

• Monday: Exxon Mobil (Research), Mattel (Research), Schering-Plough (Research).
• Tuesday: Altria (Research), Google (Research), Merck (Research).
• Wednesday: Boeing (Research), Starbucks (Research), Time Warner (Research).
• Thursday: Amazon.com (Research), Avon Products (Research), Comcast (Research).