Asia: Most stocks up despite Greek and EU talks fail to make progress

Most Asian stocks rose on Thursday despite inconclusive Greek talks.

Shanghai's main index was up 0.4% ahead of the Chinese new year holiday. Analysts expect sales to increase during the holidays. The Chinese markets will be closed for a week from 18 February.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng was higher 0.44%, despite Eurozone finance ministers failed to make progress on Greece’s bailout terms at an emergency meeting on Wednesday.

Greece’s new government is trying to garner support for a new debt proposal and relaxing the terms of five years of austerity.

Japanese Nikkei rose 1.85%, the highest level since July 2007, thanks to better-than-expected data overnight.

Japan's machine orders increased 11.4% year-on-year in December against expectations of 5.9% growth and from the previous month's fall of 14.6%.

The index was helped by a weaker yen, which was at ¥119.70 at 10:39 GMT against the dollar. On Wednesday, the yen closed at ¥120.45.

However, Australia's ASX fell 0.44% driven by bad jobs data. Unemployment rate increased to 6.4% in January from 6.1% the month before. Forecasts expected a 6.2% increase.

As a result, the number of employed people in Australia fell 12,200 in January from a increase of 42,200 the month before and against forecasts of a drop of 5,000.