Discussions at several Fed meetings earlier this year focused on concerns the economy might overheat and require the Fed to raise rates next year above a neutral setting—one designed to neither spur nor slow growth—to a level high enough to deliberately cool the economy.

Minutes of the Fed’s Nov. 7-8 meeting released last week hinted at a potential turning point in the discussions. The minutes didn’t flag the possible need for policy to turn restrictive. Instead, officials noted headwinds including a pullback in global growth, an economy that has turned a little less accommodating toward borrowing and a slowdown in interest-rate-sensitive sectors such as housing.

Fiscal policy represents another shifting factor that could require a potential recalibration. While tax cuts and spending increases served as a tailwind to growth this year, the federal funding boost expires next October.

“You could have a monetary policy that looks really good for an environment where you’re getting fiscal stimulus, and when it falls to zero, things would feel entirely different,” said Nathan Sheets, chief economist at PGIM Fixed Income and a former senior Fed economist.

Mr. Powell hasn’t spoken in detail on the economic outlook since mid-November, a period marked by rising volatility in stock markets, a swift plunge in oil prices and nascent strains in some corporate-debt markets.

Spreads of junk bonds and investment-grade debt have widened, though they remain well below levels of stress from late 2015 and early 2016, a period in which market jitters prompted the Fed to slow down planned rate increases.

In a speech last week, Mr. Powell said the Fed was studying carefully the effects of recent rate increases, which “may take a year or more to be fully realized,” he said. “We will be paying very close attention to what incoming economic and financial data are telling us.”

For investors, the question is whether Mr. Powell has changed his view about how long the central bank will need to keep raising rates.

He observed that the Fed’s benchmark short-term rate, in a range between 2% and 2.25%, was “just below” the range of neutral-rate projections submitted by 15 Fed officials at their September policy meeting, which varied from 2.5% to 3.5%.

Some commentators abbreviated Mr. Powell’s statement to make it sound like he believed rates were just below neutral. Mr. Powell hasn’t said where he thinks neutral lies or what should happen to rates once they get there.

The comment followed an off-the-cuff remark by Mr. Powell in early October that the benchmark rate was “a long way from neutral at this point, probably.”

The remark caught some investors by surprise because if Mr. Powell believed rates were a “long way” below neutral, the Fed might have to raise rates for longer than investors had thought. The aside took on added weight in the weeks that followed because it coincided with a stock-market selloff.

Pointing to the range of neutral-rate estimates last week highlighted a shift in his emphasis by Mr. Powell, but his two observations don’t show a change in the Fed’s view about the location of neutral or the number of rate increases remaining.

The extent to which any shift has occurred will become clearer this week as Fed officials discuss the economy in a series of public appearances. After this week, they begin their self-imposed premeeting blackout period in which they stop making public comments on monetary policy.

One irony of the kerfuffle caused by Mr. Powell’s October comment is that he has attempted to de-emphasize the focus on neutral-rate estimates because they are inherently uncertain. Officials want to avoid tying market expectations to something they know could change.

“They are preparing to move away from a world where you’re [raising rates] at a regular pace,” said Lewis Alexander, chief U.S. economist at Nomura Securities. “Trying to make this turn has not been flawless, and that’s because it is really hard to do.”

For the past three years, the officials knew they wanted to raise rates steadily from the low, emergency levels maintained after the 2008 financial crisis. Now they are less certain about the path ahead and have said they would offer less specific guidance about their rate plans.

Instead, they are emphasizing how near-term data will guide their decisions. If the economy slows down more than they expect over the next year, there will likely be fewer rate increases than currently anticipated. If employment, wage and price gains stay strong despite recent softness in financial markets and housing, rate rises will likely continue.

Write to Nick Timiraos at nick.timiraos@wsj.com