As you mentioned earlier, the earnings of the sti components are down generally.
Unless the general economic conditions and earnings of these companies improve, sti is hard to break 3000.
usually stock market is half to 1 year ahead of the real economy
in 2015 we saw the STI fell from 3500 to a lows of 2500... after that we saw commodity/property/marine companies all reporting very weak earnings in late 2015 and whole of 2016
if 2017 or 2018 earnings bounce back up, the stock market should rally in early to mid 2017.....
usually the insiders, people at the ground level of the industry will know when the turnaround is coming more accurately than us