* Market cautious on G20 meeting but no resolution seen
* Euro capped after repeated failure above $1.40
* Euro/yen chart showing some deterioration
By Charlotte Cooper
TOKYO, Oct 22 (Reuters) - The dollar sat tight on Friday as G20 finance ministers began a meeting which players doubt will yield much progress on the vexed question of currency depreciations, with charts instead dictating play.
The euro, which corrected sharply lower this week after a month-long rally, paused after a rebound failed to clear resistance at $1.4050 on Thursday, and was showing signs of deterioration on its euro/yen chart.
The dollar index, which has staged a small rebound from a 10-month low, needs a sustained break of resistance at 77.60-65 to keep up momentum for a higher bounce.
For now, though, the market is watching the G20 meeting of finance ministers and central bankers in South Korea. An informed source said they were unlikely to reach an accord rejecting currency devaluations and capping current account balances after U.S. proposals ran into stiff opposition.
"It's too much to expect all these countries to produce anything meaningful, concrete and binding. Even (U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim) Geithner said this is a 2-3 year process," said Gareth Berry, a currency strategist at UBS in Singapore.
Some saw the possibility of a statement playing down the notion of a currency conflict, which might offer the dollar some support near term, but others said any reaction would be brief and attention would flick back to the other major question of how big any quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve might be.
With a second round of QE now expected, the major currencies have established holding patterns as the market awaits events.
The euro was up 0.1 percent at $1.3934, with initial support at about $1.3870, Thursday's low and a 50 percent retracement of its rebound from this week's $1.3697 low, then at $1.3820-30 and $1.3775.
Initial resistance is plotted at $1.3960 with bigger resistance at Thursday's high around $1.4050, where a break would open up for a re-test of $1.4161, the top of the recent rally and its highest level since January.
The euro slipped 0.1 percent to 113.11 yen, with selling appearing to come from hedge funds or institutional investors, a Japanese bank trader said.
Euro/yen's outlook has deteriorated on its daily Ichimoku charts, popular among Japanese traders, as its tenkan line, now at 113.16, has dropped below its kijun line, now at 113.55, for the first time since Japan's intervention on Sept. 15.
Dollar/yen slipped 0.2 percent to 81.17 yen, still holding above its latest 15-year low of 80.84 yen set this week and keeping away from its record postwar low of 79.75 set in 1995.
Wariness about intervention has kept the dollar supported, after Japan intervened in September for the first time in six years.
"People are just not quite sure what Japan's tactics are on the currency and how afraid they should be. But clearly there is a little bit of unease about putting on a fresh short position from here," said Sean Callow, a currency strategist at Westpac Bank in Sydney.
Still, any rallies rapidly meet with selling, likely by Japanese exporters, and the dollar failed to rise back above 82.00 yen even when it was correcting higher against other currencies this week.
Prospects for the Fed to pump more money into the economy next month, likely through direct purchases of Treasury debt, have pushed the dollar down more than 7 percent against other major currencies since September.
The dollar index, which tracks the greenback versus a basket of six major currencies, was flat at 77.404, above a recent 10-month low of 76.144 but still well off highs around 83 seen last month.
Immediate resistance stood at 77.65, with major resistance around 78.35, about the high of Wednesday trade.
It has major trend line support at 76.10, which could limit its downside, although a break there could open the way to last November's low at 74.17.
"Another downleg in DXY would require taking out these thresholds (76.10), which would likely require another round of distinct USD bearishness," said David Watt, a senior currency strategist at RBC Dominion Securities in Toronto. (Additional reporting by Ian Chua in Sydney and Hideyuki Sano in Tokyo; contribution by Reuters FX analyst Krishna Kumar; Editing by Michael Watson)