* Euro backs off previous day's high
* Markets take profits on recent gains following Greek bailout deal
* Dollar/yen stays firm, touches fresh 6-month high (Updates prices, adds comments)
SINGAPORE, Feb 22 (Reuters) - The euro struggled to make headway on Wednesday, having retreated from near two-week highs as optimism over the long-awaited Greek bailout deal quickly gave way to concerns about economic growth and implementation risks.
The yen dipped against the dollar and touched a fresh six-month low, staying on the defensive after the Bank of Japan (EUREX: FMJP.EX - news) 's surprise monetary easing last week.
The euro held steady from late U.S. trade on Tuesday at $1.3232, down from Tuesday's high of $1.3293, which was the euro's highest level since Feb. 9. It faces resistance at $1.3308, the 100-day moving average.
"The euro had priced in a lot of the good news, in the sense that it had priced in already some form of agreement," said Mitul Kotecha, head of global foreign exchange strategy for Credit Agricole (Milan: ACA.MI - news) in Hong Kong.
"It's not surprising to see it struggling to break higher," Kotecha added.
While Greece's aid package helped ease fears of an immediate default, the country's economic outlook remained anything but rosy, a problem that could yet derail its efforts to meet tough cost-cutting measures.
Parliaments in three countries that have been most critical of bailouts - Germany, the Netherlands and Finland - must now approve the package. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, who caused an outcry by suggesting that Greece was a "bottomless pit", said he was confident it would be passed.
The dollar index edged up 0.1 percent to 79.136 as the euro floundered.
Against the yen, the dollar rose 0.3 percent to 79.961 yen at one point, its highest level since early August 2011.
The dollar has rallied roughly 5 percent from lows around 76.00 yen hit in early February, spurred in part by yen-weakness after the Bank of Japan's surprise easing last week.
"The pace of the yen's move in recent days looks unsustainable. But the yen has the ability to weaken further, although it's not going to do so in a straight line," analysts at Societe Generale (Paris: FR0000130809 - news) wrote in a note.
A trader for a Japanese bank in Tokyo said dollar offers were lined up at levels above 80 yen, while dollar buyers such as Japanese importers were placing bids at levels around 79 yen.
The dollar is now testing strong technical resistance from a cloud on the weekly Ichimoku chart.
The dollar has not managed to stay above the weekly cloud for any sustained period since mid-2007, and a breach of that resistance could give the dollar additional momentum against the yen.
The dollar has clawed above the bottom of the cloud at 79.73 yen, and faces more resistance at the cloud top, which comes in at 80.94 this week.
The Australian dollar held steady at $1.0658, more than a full cent lower from this week's high of $1.0817.
The Aussie dollar showed limited reaction to data showing that China's manufacturing sector contracted in February for the fourth straight month as new export orders dropped sharply in the face of the euro area debt crisis.
The HSBC flash purchasing managers index, the earliest indicator of China's industrial activity, rose to a four-month-high at 49.7 in February. The PMI has been below 50, which demarcates expansion from contraction, for most of the last eight months.
China's economic outlook is a focal point for market players, who fret that risk sentiment could take a hit if the country's economic growth were to slow down too sharply. (Additional reporting by Ian Chua in Sydney and Hideyuki Sano in Tokyo; Editing by Ramya Venugopal)
