* Risk appetite supported after US shares hit 9-month highs
* Kiwi touches 10-month peak vs dollar
* Bullish equities and improving economy seen hurting dollar
* Euro may rise towards December high of $1.4720
* Investors await BoE, ECB policy meetings
By Masayuki Kitano
TOKYO, Aug 5 (Reuters) - The dollar held steady near its 2009 lows against the euro on Wednesday, but risks were seen on the downside due to increasing signs of improvement in the global economy and bearish technical charts.
The dollar has slid broadly since March as riskier assets such as equities and oil rallied on improving economic data, eroding demand for the safe-haven greenback.
The dollar has extended its losses this week as data highlighted an improvement in global manufacturing activity, and U.S. equities climbed towards nine-month peaks, with some market players seeing the risk of further declines.
"One thing to watch out for is the possibility of relatively large declines in the dollar," said Tohru Sasaki, chief foreign exchange strategist for JPMorgan Chase Bank in Tokyo.
Rises in equities seem to have gained momentum and various fiscal stimulus measures will likely help lend them support for a while, pressuring the dollar, Sasaki said.
The improving global economic outlook bodes ill for the dollar, which was already vulnerable as capital inflows into the United States have been relatively subdued and since the U.S. fiscal deficit has been expanding, he added.
The dollar drifted sideways against the euro, which was steady from late New York on Tuesday at $1.4411. The euro had climbed to $1.4445 on trading platform EBS earlier this week, its highest since mid-December, when it rose as high as $1.4720.
The dollar dipped 0.2 percent against a basket of currencies, to 77.640, nearing a 10-month low of 77.451 hit earlier this week.
"When positive economic data comes out, people head towards taking risk," said a trader for a major Japanese bank.
Against this backdrop and due to firmness in commodities, currencies such as the Australian, New Zealand and Canadian dollars have been firm recently, the trader said.
Those three currencies all hit 10-month highs against the dollar this week.
RISK APPETITE, BEARISH CHARTS
The New Zealand dollar briefly scaled a peak of $0.6751 earlier on Wednesday, its highest since early October, before pulling back to $0.6730, down 0.2 percent from late U.S. trading on Tuesday.
Market players said the kiwi gained a boost after New Zealand's Fonterra Cooperative Group, the world's top dairy exporter, said international dairy prices surged at its latest auction, recovering after a recent run of falls.
The euro seems poised to rise toward that December peak of $1.4720, or perhaps even higher, said Masashi Hashimoto, senior analyst for Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ.
Over the past few weeks, the euro has breached key resistance on weekly Ichimoku charts by breaking above the top of the cloud. The same holds true for the Australian dollar.
"It is possible to think that this is the start of a medium-term trend," Hashimoto said.
Hashimoto added, however, that the fact that the euro's 52-week moving average was pointed downwards suggested that it was too early to come to that conclusion.
For now the euro may target the December peak, and if that is breached, the next target would be levels around $1.51, roughly where the 76.4 percent Fibonacci retracement of the euro's drop from its record high of $1.6040 last July down to its October trough near $1.2330, Hashimoto said.
The euro and sterling were little changed on the day, as investors awaited policy decisions by the European Central Bank and the Bank of England later this week.
Sterling rose 0.1 percent to $1.6941, hovering near a nine-month high of $1.7005 hit on Tuesday.
The dollar fell 0.2 percent against the yen to 95.02 yen.
The Dow Jones industrial average and the Standard & Poor's 500 Index both hit nine-month highs on Tuesday. (Additional reporting by Shinji Kitamura and Satomi Noguchi;Editing by Joseph Radford)