COMMENT-Dollar has a mountain to climb to get back on-side

March 7 (Reuters) - The longer-term charts continue to look ominous for the dollar with bear signals drawing strong confirmation and as such any recovery is likely to be hard fought.

A short-term recovery in early March had been our call but the pull of strongly bearish weekly and monthly charts proved too much, and the dollar index has racked up consecutive bearish sessions March 3-6.

The monthly candlestick chart is worrying for the dollar. The index based in October, rallied in November and December, and put in a recovery high of 110.17 in January. However, a January long-legged northern doji candle warned of a possible direction change. A doji candle is where the open and close are the same or very near the same.

February's price action delivered another strong reversal signal, a bearish engulfing line, and the two candlestick warnings taken together are significant.

Engulfing lines are a two-candle pattern in which the second candle's real body (shaded area between the open and close) completely engulfs the previous session's real body. In a bull trend, the second candle would have a bearish real body; selling pressure has overwhelmed buying pressure.

The monthly chart has become increasingly bearish as the dollar drops through key support at the 10-month moving average and monthly Ichimoku cloud top, 105.04 and 104.89, respectively. The next downside target is at 102.51, a 76.4% Fibonacci retracement level taken off the 100.15-110.17 September-to-January rally.