Asian shares gain as investors look for signs of Greece talks end game

Investing.com - Asian shares mostly gained on Friday with Sydney the odd-man out as investors watch the back-and-forth of Greece debt talks for signs of an end game.

The Nikkei 225 inched up 0.01% after the break, while the Shanghai Composite gained 0.44% and the Hang Seng index was up 0.62%.

The S&P/ASX 200 however eased 0.15%.

Officials from the International Monetary Fund on Thursday hastily ended negotiations with Greece in Brussels, amid a lack of progress.

Speaking to reporters in Washington, IMF spokesman Gerry Rice said there are still key sticking points in the negotiations on pension, tax and financing considerations. IMF officials have a history of breaking off talks with Greece if they are dissatisfied with the direction of the negotiations.

"The IMF never leaves the table, the ball is very much in Greece's court," Rice said.

Greece prime minister Alexis Tsipras met with European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker for roughly two hours on Thursday before members of the Greek bailout team left Brussels. Tsipras told reporters on Thursday afternoon that the two sides still remained far apart on a number of critical issues.

"We're working in order to bridge the remaining differences and especially the differences on fiscal and financial issues," Tsipras said. "We are working to assure an agreement which will ensure that Greece will recover with social cohesion and viable public debts."

On Wednesday German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras had agreed to work "intensively" with the country’s creditors in order to avoid default at the end of the month.

Greece’s bailout agreement with the European Union and the International Monetary Fund is set to expire at the end of this month and it cannot make further debt repayments without a new deal.

Overnight, stocks on the U.S. equities markets moved broadly higher on Thursday extending gains from one session earlier, as a wave of robust economic outweighed increasing concerns of a Greek default on its sovereign debt.

One day after jumping more than 230 points, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose modestly on Thursday, while the NASDAQ Composite index and the S&P Composite index each inched up remaining in near-record territory. The Dow gained 38.97 or 0.22% to close at 18,039.37 on Thursday, while the NASDAQ rose 5.82 or 0.11% to remain comfortably above the symbolic 5,000 level at 5,082.51.

The S&P 500, meanwhile, gained 3.66 or 0.17% to , as seven of 10 sectors closed in the green. Stocks in the Utilities, Health Care and Telecommunications sectors led, while stocks in the Energy, Technology and Consumer Goods industries lagged.