The Indian markets continued to trade lower on Friday amid mixed global cues and volatility as broader Nifty was seen hovering around crucial 17, 500 as the Sensex declined by over 150 points. Benchmarks Nifty and the Sensex were trading lower by 0.32% and 0.36% respectively in the afternoon trade. The Nifty50 even slipped below 17,500 briefly.   

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Media, Realty declined the most as auto, bank and financial services too remained under pressure. Metal index surged the most in a negative market on Friday as Hindalco, JSW Steel and Tata Steel led from the front. In the broader market, midcap and small cap indices too declined by over half-a-percent.  

Hero MotoCorp, Mahindra & Mahindra, Eicher Motors, HDFC Life, State Bank, Kotak Bank, NTPC, ICICI Bank and Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) declined the most.  

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Hindalco, Tata Steel, JSW Steel, Divis Laboratories, Ultratech Cement, ONGC, Sun Pharma, L&T, Asian Paints, Infosys and HCL Tech were among top gainers.  

Meanwhile, Asian equities rose on Friday and were set for a weekly gain as strong earnings at Amazon.com boosted U.S. futures, while selling in bonds spread to Japan from other markets as investors reacted to hawkish signals from central banks in Europe, said a Reuters report. 

There was a downfall seen in the auto and realty sectors which dragged the benchmarks into the negative territory, said Gaurav Garg, Head of Research, Capitalvia Global Research Ltd 

He said the sentiments were also damaged due to private reports claiming that the Finance Ministry's internal predictions for real gross domestic growth in FY23 are lower than the 8-8.5 percent handed forth in the 2021-22 Economic Survey.  

Garg said traders, on the other hand, dismissed the IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva's assertion that Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's Union budget is a "thoughtful" policy programme for India, emphasizing innovation in research and development, human capital investment, and digitization. 

"On the international front, Asian markets were trading higher as investors' spirits were raised by optimism fueled by better-than-expected US earnings reports and hawkish monetary policy pronouncements from the Bank of England and the European Central Bank" he added. 

After heavy selling on Thursday, when Facebook owner Meta Platforms dropped 26%, Wall Street futures rebounded courtesy of an earnings beat that lifted Amazon shares about 14% in after-market trade.