Going ahead, the 200-day moving average, which is placed around 10,843, is likely to act as an immediate hurdle, followed by 10,980. Stocks in news: UPL, ICICI Lombard General Insurance, Bank of India, Varun Beverages and Oriental Bank of Commerce.

Key benchmarks may begin the first trading session for the month of February on positive note and once the budget announcement begins we will see the markets reacting to the budget proposals. Traders will be getting encouragement with GST collections in January crossing the Rs 1 lakh crore mark and the statistics office's revision of the growth rate for India’s gross domestic product data for financial years 2016-18 and 2017-18. The GDP growth for FY17 was revised from 7.1 per cent earlier to 8.2 per cent and for FY18 from 6.7 per cent earlier to 7.2 per cent.

The following stocks would be in focus during Friday’s trading session in light of their results announcement on February 1: Berger Paints, Dr. Rreddy, Deepak Nitrite, Jubilant Life sciences and Titan.

Arm of L&T, L&T Hydrocarbon Engineering has won two major orders from Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOC) for Ethylene Glycol project. Shares gain on intraday basis. 

UPL Limited gets picked up by our Bollinger Band Squeeze scanner, suggesting that a consolidation breakout is expected in the near-term. A volatility contraction or narrowing of the bands can foreshadow a significant advance or decline in the stock.

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