Nifty Snaps Its Winning Streak, US-Iran Shock, and Earnings Season Opens

This was one of the more bipolar weeks in recent memory. The Nifty broke above its 200-day moving average on Monday on a strong HDFC Bank update, then suffered its worst single session in over three months on Wednesday after a fresh US-Iran flare-up, before clawing most of it back by Friday on a TCS-powered rebound. Underneath the volatility, six other stories deserve your attention: an earnings season that has just opened, a bank quietly strengthening its balance sheet ahead of results, a trade deal still stuck, institutional investors who kept buying through the chaos, and a large foreign pension fund quietly scaling up its bet on Indian infrastructure. Here is the investor lens on each.

Nifty Slips 0.26%, Snapping a Four-Week Winning Streak

The Nifty 50 closed the week ending July 10 at 24,207, down 64 points, while the Sensex settled at 77,569. The week began with a breakout above the 200-day moving average on the back of a strong HDFC Bank business update, but a violent mid-week sell-off driven by renewed Middle East tensions erased most of the early gains before a Friday recovery, led by IT stocks, pulled the index back toward flat.

US-Iran Tensions Flare Again, Crude Jumps Past $78.8 a Barrel

Fresh strikes and retaliatory attacks between the US and Iran ended a fragile ceasefire mid-week, sending Brent crude above $78.8 a barrel and India VIX briefly spiking to 14.68 on Wednesday. Nearly Rs 9 lakh crore in market value was wiped out in that single session, the Nifty's sharpest one-day fall in over three months, before the panic faded and volatility eased through the rest of the week.

TCS Opens Q1 FY27 Earnings Season With a Beat

TCS kicked off the June quarter earnings season with profit up 4.6% year on year and revenue up 13.9%, comfortably ahead of expectations, along with a Rs 12 interim dividend. The result helped power Friday's rebound, with IT stocks leading the broader market recovery after a punishing mid-week.

HDFC Bank Posts Strong Q1 Business Update, New Chairman Confirmed Ahead of Results

HDFC Bank's Q1 FY27 business update showed gross advances up 15.4% year on year to Rs 30.61 lakh crore and total deposits up 14.7% to Rs 31.71 lakh crore, with CASA deposits rising 9.4%. The stock rose on the update. Separately, the bank's board confirmed former Finance Secretary Rajiv Kumar as part-time chairman, replacing Atanu Chakraborty, who stepped down in March citing ethical concerns. Full Q1 FY27 results are due on July 18.

India-US Trade Deal Remains Stalled Despite 'Almost There' Signals

Talks on the full India-US Bilateral Trade Agreement remain stuck. After US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer's visit to New Delhi, both sides suggested the deal was around 99 percent finalised, but India then pulled back, with Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal saying the agreement will stay on hold unless the US offers India better terms than competing exporters like Vietnam and Thailand. Under the interim framework already in place, India faces an 18% US reciprocal tariff on a range of goods pending the final deal.

FIIs Keep Buying Through the Volatility, DIIs Provide Steady Support

Foreign institutional investors were net buyers on four of the five trading sessions this week, including Rs 2,603 crore on Friday and Rs 1,962 crore on Tuesday, and even limited their selling to a modest Rs 533 crore on the worst day of the sell-off. Domestic institutional investors, driven largely by steady SIP inflows, bought on four of five sessions as well, with over Rs 3,700 crore of buying on Monday alone. By the end of the week, India VIX had eased back from its Wednesday spike of 14.68 to the 12-13 range, signalling the panic had passed.

Modi's Indo-Pacific Tour Delivers on Two Fronts: Australian Capital and a New Zealand Trade Push

Modi's three-nation Indo-Pacific tour through Indonesia, Australia, and New Zealand produced two concrete wins for India this week. In Australia, pension giant AustralianSuper is investing a further AU$500 million in India's National Investment and Infrastructure Fund, taking its total NIIF holdings to AU$3.3 billion, up from an original AU$240 million commitment in 2019 that CIO Shaun Manuell has called one of the fund's best-performing infrastructure bets. Then in Auckland, on the first visit by an Indian Prime Minister to New Zealand in nearly 40 years, India and New Zealand elevated relations to a strategic partnership, building on the FTA signed in April 2026, and set a target to double bilateral trade in goods and services to NZ$7 billion, roughly Rs 35,000 crore, by 2030. The visit produced 18 outcomes including 10 formal agreements spanning trade, maritime cooperation, and defence logistics.

Put together, this week was less about any single headline and more about how the market absorbed shocks without breaking down. A geopolitical scare that wiped out Rs 9 lakh crore in a day was largely recovered by Friday. Earnings season is off to a strong start with TCS, and HDFC Bank looks well positioned heading into its own results on July 18. The trade deal overhang persists, but institutional flows suggest neither foreign nor domestic investors are treating current levels as expensive. For long-term SIP and goal-based investors, the message from this week is straightforward: stay the course, expect more volatility as US-Iran developments and the July 18 banking results play out, and use sharp dips as a reminder of why disciplined, staggered investing works better than trying to predict the next headline.