US STOCKS-Wall Street tumbles as investors brace for dour earnings

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* Banks drop ahead of earnings reports this week
* Ford slides on profit warning
* Energy stocks rise after OPEC+ agrees record output cut
* Indexes off: Dow 1.24%, S&P 1.12%, Nasdaq 0.43%

(Updates to open)
By Medha Singh
April 13 (Reuters) - Wall Street's main indexes slipped on
Monday as corporate America launches into what is expected to be
a painful quarterly earnings season due to the coronavirus
pandemic.
JPMorgan Chase & Co JPM.N and Wells Fargo & Co WFC.N
will kick off the reporting season on Tuesday, with analysts
expecting an uptick in trading revenue to be offset by declines
in other businesses and a bleak outlook for the rest of 2020.
The S&P banking subsector .SPXBK shed 2.5%, while the
broader financial sector .SPSY dragged on the benchmark S&P
500 with a 2.4% fall.
Overall, earnings for S&P 500 firms are expected to tumble
9.0% in the first quarter, compared with a Jan. 1 forecast of a
6.3% rise, before plummeting 20.7% in the second quarter as
sweeping lockdowns halt business activity and spark furloughs.
"We're bracing for one of the worst earnings seasons in
recent history," said Jesse Cohen, senior analyst at financial
markets platform Investing.com.
The S&P 500 .SPX has recovered about 26% since hitting a
three-year low in March, powered by aggressive U.S. monetary and
fiscal stimulus and early signs of a potential peaking in U.S.
coronavirus cases, but remains about 18% below its mid-February
record high amid fears of a deep global recession.
"The raft of stimulus from the Federal Reserve has distorted
stock prices, which have become disconnected from fundamentals.
Combined with the bleak second-quarter data expected to come
this month, there is definitely room for more downside," Cohen
said.
U.S. jobless claims topped a staggering 16 million in the
three weeks to April 4 and economists expect job losses of up to
20 million this month, as entire sectors shut down to try and
contain the pandemic.
The outbreak could reach its U.S. peak this week, a top
health official said on Monday, as the White House considers
when and how to lift stay-at-home restrictions. "It's becoming clear that reaching the virus crescendo does
not automatically translate into a timeline for when an economy
will re-open," said Marios Hadjikyriacos, investment analyst at
online broker XM in Cyprus.
At 10:08 a.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI
was down 295.12 points, or 1.24%, at 23,424.25, the S&P 500
.SPX was down 31.30 points, or 1.12%, at 2,758.52 and the
Nasdaq Composite .IXIC was down 35.15 points, or 0.43%, at
8,118.42.
Energy stocks .SPNY gained 1.4% following a record oil
output cut. O/R .
Dish Network Corp DISH.O shed 3.5% as it announced layoffs
and said it was re-evaluating its business to cope better with
the fallout from the coronavirus outbreak. Ford Motor Co F.N fell 3.7% after the carmaker projected
quarterly adjusted loss before interest and taxes to be about
$600 million, compared with a profit of $2.4 billion a year
earlier. Declining issues outnumbered advancers more than 3-to-1 on
the NYSE and 2-to-1 on the Nasdaq.
The S&P index recorded two new 52-week highs and no new low,
while the Nasdaq recorded seven new highs and four new lows.