On Tuesday, the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee kicks off its two-day meeting in Washington, D.C., with an interest rate decision coming down on Wednesday. The Fed will also release economic projections from its leadership about where they think rates are headed.

But we're also getting predictions about where interest rates could be headed on the regular from the bond market. Demand for short-term Treasury bills and long-term bonds — at either end of what's known as the yield curve — tells us a lot about what investors are expecting in terms of interest rates and the economy in general.

But there’s a part of the yield curve that we don’t often hear about: medium-term Treasurys, otherwise known as the belly of the curve. And that belly has been sending plenty of signals, too.

The government issues Treasurys that mature in anywhere from less than a year to 10 and even 30 years. So, the belly of the curve is basically everything in the middle.

“We tend to focus on 2-year and 5-year notes,” said Chris Low, chief economist at FHN Financial.

Yields on Treasurys in that belly of the curve are influenced by what investors expect the Federal Reserve to do in that two- to five-year timeframe, Low added.

“They anticipate,” he said. “So when we talk about, ‘the Fed might cut rates at an upcoming meeting or they might not,’ well, we’re anticipating not just the next one, but the next several years' worth.”

Investors know that the Federal Reserve is still trying to bring rates down to a neutral level to support full employment and stable inflation.

If investors think interest rates are going to keep falling, they’re more likely to buy those bonds today. But Low said that over the last couple of weeks, demand for Treasurys within that belly of the curve has eased off a bit.

“When we look at the pricing of interest rates in the belly of the curve, it partly reflects a debate within the trading community, within the Federal Reserve itself, about just exactly where is neutral?” he said.

Over the last couple of months, expectations for economic growth have picked up.

The tax incentives in the budget law passed this year are expected to stimulate consumer spending, according to John Canavan, lead market analyst at Oxford Economics.

“That same act has also resulted in significant investment benefits for corporations, which is likely to improve capital expenditures next year, which should help economic growth,” he said.

And if economic growth continues to pick up? And inflation sticks around? “That actually means the Fed is likely to cut rates less,” said Kathy Bostjancic, chief economist at Nationwide.

Bond markets are only expecting two cuts next year, she said. Beyond that, “we think that then we settle into a neutral level, and it could be there for a while.”

In other words: The belly of the curve is suggesting that rate cuts could be coming to an end.