U.S. stocks are on track for a mixed start on Wednesday as the market digests mixed earnings reports and looks ahead to more speeches by Federal Reserve officials. Given the paucity of any market-moving economic data, the spotlight will likely be on central bank officials’s statements about rates and inflation. The still-contained bond yields suggest traders are still harboring hopes of rate cuts this year. The importance of each incoming data, therefore, can’t be emphasized enough. “Wall Street will continue to root for bad economic news since it wants to guilt the Fed to begin cutting key interest rates sooner rather than later,” said fund manager Louis Navellier. Futures Performance (+/-) Nasdaq 100 -0.03% S&P 500 -0.01% Dow +0.07% R2K -0.46% In premarket trading on Wednesday, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSE:SPY) edged up 0.02% to $517.24, while the Invesco QQQ ETF (NASDAQ:QQQ) slipped 0.02% to $440.21, according to Benzinga Pro data. Cues From Previous Session: Some disappointing earnings, particularly from the tech space, were used by traders as a reason for profit-taking on Tuesday. To make matters worse, Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari, while speaking at a Milken Institute conference., said the the Fed may have to stay higher for longer. He also opined that inflation may not be too high to contain inflationary pressure. The major averages opened on a mixed note and experienced some volatility in the morning session. Although the indices moved uniformly higher and hovered above the unchanged line during the mid-session, they pulled back in the afternoon. While the Nasdaq Composite settled the day modestly lower, the S&P 500 Index and the Dow Industrials experienced modest gains. Most sectors advanced, although consumer discretionary, IT, and energy stocks came under selling pressure. In the process, the Dow Industrials ...