Asia: Mixed stocks after China recovers from early losses

Asian stocks rebounded on Thursday after a negative start following unsuccessful talks between Greece and its creditors.

Following a large drop in Chinese stocks as a brokerage suspended margin financing, the Shanghai composite index closed up 0.76%.

Golden Sun Securities suspended all margin financing purchases on its start-up board Chinext in order to control risks, according to analysts.

However, Hong Kong's Hang Seng continued to fall 0.38% one day after a decline in the city’s PMI to 47.6 in May from 48.6 in April. Markit said the data suggested that Hong Kong’s economy "may struggle to recover any growth momentum in the near-term, as companies continued to shed staff and reduced their input buying in response to weaker demand conditions”.

Elsewhere in Japan, the Nikkei 225 rose slightly by 0.07% despite investors remaining cautious over volatility in global bond yields.

During a Bank of Japan's meeting, governor Haruhiko Kuroda said attitude and conviction were needed to fight against deflation.

“I trust that many of you are familiar with the story of Peter Pan, in which it says, ‘The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it,’ Yes, what we need is a positive attitude and conviction,” Kuroda said.

Japanese ecommerce firm Rakuten lost 6.2% after announcing it plans to issue new shares to raise $1.2bn.

Australia's ASX was down 1.42% following disappointing data from the Bureau of Statistics. Retail sales came flat in April from 0.2% one month earlier, despite expectations of a 0.4% increase.

As a result, department store chain Myer lost 2.78% and electronics shop JB Hi-Fi was down 0.29%.