FOREX-Dollar dogged by US debt stalemate; yen seesaws

* Dollar hits record low vs Swissie, 4-mth low vs yen
* Market unfazed by Obama's call for debt deal
* Dollar/yen hit 4-mth low on stop-loss selling
* Dollar/yen briefly spikes higher, but no talk of intervention
* Buying by hedge fund and Japanese banks seen behind dlr/yen spike

By Masayuki Kitano

SINGAPORE, July 26 (Reuters) - The dollar hit a record low against the Swiss franc and a four-month trough versus the yen on Tuesday, as investors remained sceptical that U.S. President Barack Obama's call for compromise would lead to a swift breakthrough in deadlocked debt talks.

Stop-loss selling and speculative sales aimed at taking out an option barrier helped add fuel to the dollar's drop against the yen.

The dollar later trimmed its losses, and surged nearly a full yen in a matter of minutes, a spike that market players attributed to dollar buying by a hedge fund and some Japanese banks.

Traders said there was no talk of yen-selling intervention by Japanese authorities, and the dollar quickly retreated from its intraday high.

"The comments today from President Obama and Speaker Boehner suggest a compromise budget deal is still not close," said Christopher Gothard, head of FX for Brown Brothers Harriman in Hong Kong.

"Today's comments from Obama didn't offer any specifics and were more of a general appeal, so I think the market may have been disappointed with the lack of progress," he added.

The dollar fell 0.2 percent to 78.11 yen . Earlier, it rose to as high as 78.75 yen, just minutes after hitting a four-month low of 77.883 yen on trading platform EBS, and edging closer to a record low of 76.25 yen hit in March.

The dollar struck a record low versus the Swiss franc of 0.8005 at one point. After trimming a bit of its losses, the dollar was down 0.6 percent at 0.8010 francs.

Adding to pressure on the dollar, the euro rose 0.7 percent to $1.4481 , its rise having gained steam after breaching a series of chart resistance, including the top of the daily Ichimoku cloud and trendline resistance drawn off a peak hit in May.

One possible resistance, and upside target for the euro lies at $1.4519, a 61.8 percent retracement of the euro's May to July slide.

President Barack Obama called on Republican and Democratic leaders on Monday night to reach a fair compromise on raising the debt ceiling to avert a "reckless and irresponsible" national default.

In an address to the nation, Obama spelled out the severe economic consequences of a default or even a credit ratings downgrade resulting from failure to strike a deal on raising the $14.3 trillion debt limit and reducing the budget deficit.

"The market is 99.9 percent certain that some sort of agreement will be reached...But the closer they get to the Aug. 2 deadline, the worst the panic is likely to be," said David Scutt, a trader at Arab Bank Australia

With jitters over the lack of a deal on raising the U.S. debt ceiling and the possibility of a sovereign rating downgrade weighing on the dollar, and the euro facing sovereign debt woes of its own, the yen and emerging Asian currencies may continue to benefit, said Satoshi Okagawa, senior global markets analyst for Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation in Singapore.

"The U.S. yield curve has been steepening with short-term yields staying low, and that is likely to keep pressure on the dollar," Okagawa said. (Additional reporting by Antoni Slodkowski and Hideyuki Sano in Tokyo, Reuters FX analyst Rick Lloyd in Singapore and Cecile Lefort in Sydney; Editing by Ramya Venugopal)