Indian shares ended higher for the third straight week during the five-day trading session ended Friday despite a dull start Monday and heavy volatility in the following sessions.

Looking ahead, the markets are expected to remain choppy even though there will be a lot of interest in small and medium-sized companies as also banking stocks that have continued to outperform the broader indices, analysts said.

"Two main factors propped up the Indian stock markets this week - the US Federal Reserve's decision not to hike interest rate and the satisfactory performance of Indian companies in the first quarter of this fiscal," Indo-Asian News Service quoted a local analyst as saying Saturday.

"But looking ahead, with Indian banks deciding to push ahead with interest rate hikes, investors will exercise caution with every gain. The terror threats will also have an impact on sentiments," the analyst said.

The sensitive index (Sensex) of the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) closed with a net gain of 325.95 points, or three percent Friday - ending at 11,192.46 points compared with the previous week's closing at 10,866.51 points.

But before that, the bellwether index crossed the 12,000-point mark twice - on Thursday and again on Friday - before slipping, but yet managed to close above the 11,000-point level.

The Index had breached the 11,000-point mark in the previous week as well during intra-day trading but could not manage to end above that level.

The foreign institutional investors (FIIs) were net buyers during the week with purchases worth 165.60 million U.S. dollars in the equities market during the week. Monday was the only day when foreign funds were net sellers - worth 10.1 million U.S. dollars.

Source: Xinhua