Mumbai: Strong corporate earnings prompted investors to come back to the buying table at Indian equities markets Friday as a key index closed at the highest level since June 17, 2008. The BSE index today opened with a positive gap of 61 points at 15,449. The index surged thereafter to the calendar year's high of 15,733 - up 345 points. Towards the end of the day, the index slipped for a brief while but managed to recover sharply. The Sensex finally ended the day with a gain of 282 points (two percent) at 15,670. The chart showing today's performance of Sensex is on the left. The BSE Oil and Gas and FMCG indices gained three percent each to 2,738 and 9,480, respectively. The NSE Nifty, meanwhile, ended at 4,636, up 65 points. Earlier in the day the index touched a high of 4,670 - up 99 points. U.S. markets had closed with big gains yesterday. Asian markets today had closed at their 11-month high. This has taken the Sensex up 291 points (two percent) this week. The Nifty has added 68 points (1.5 percent) at the same time. The market breadth today was positive. Out of 2,801 stocks traded, 1,401 advanced while 1,299 declined. Hindalco and Tata Motors have surged 6.5 percent each to 100 and 422, respectively. ONGC has rallied six percent to 1,165. SBI has gained five percent at 1,814. Hindustan Unilever added three percent to 291. Reliance topped the combined value chart with a turnover of 875.43 crore, followed SBI (864.31 crore), DLF (776.88 crore), Tata Steel (752.48 crore) and Suzlon (660.45 crore). The combined volume chart was led by Unitech with trades of 81.45 million shares, followed by Suzlon (65.09 million), Mahindra Satyam (52.11 million), Ispat Industries (50.2 million) and IFCI (42.47 million).