Dalal Street closed Friday on a somber note, however, the Nifty and the Sensex gained for the second straight week for the first time in two months.

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The Nifty is still battling that range, the same range of 400 points, the downside about 17,800 to about 18,200 on the upside and it has been that way for three weeks, all three weeks of 2023.

On the downside, the 17,800 broadly, that level is important. Nifty must defend 17,853 and 17,761, we have been highlighting that the December swing low has not been broken, thankfully. So maybe it sort of escaped without further pressure further cuts.

Earnings is important to note, consumer companies and so called growth stocks they are seeing earnings downgrades coming through. Over the last 48 hours companies like Asian Paints, Havells, HUL for that matter, are seeing more downgrades than upgrades. It would be hard-pressed to find where there are upgrades, meaningful upgrades at all anywhere in terms of the earnings that have come this week so far.

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The baton in that sense of earnings once again falls on banking and financial services companies. Over the weekend ICICI Bank and Kotak Mahindra Bank will report its Q3 earnings, and it is to be seen if that can do something for the market. HDFC Bank could not but ICICI and Kotak will report they will be important.

Reliance Industries is important. Last quarter, it saw a bit of a pause. But will it see a resumption of the quarter-on-quarter earnings growth for Reliance this time around and that's a big stock 12 percent weight of the index could move things around.

Lastly, from the global arena, it's mixed, it's not really getting a clear picture. But the S&P 500, the benchmark there is it an important juncture. It is basically once again testing the downward-sloping trendline all the way from the January 2021 all-time high, which is held through this year. Every time it goes to that level it sees a 7, 8-10 percent kind of a pullback. Two days in a row the S&P pull backed not much, by about 1.50- 2 percent in aggregate – is this a start of fresh downtrend or this time we finally take that out - those are bigger questions to keep an eye out on.

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