RPT-Wall St Week Ahead: Stocks to track bank earnings, data

(Repeats column initially released late on Friday)

By Ellis Mnyandu

NEW YORK, July 12 (Reuters) - With Wall Street's rally stalled, this week could be crunch time as big banks' earnings, including Citigroup's (C.N), roll in and investors scrutinize reams of economic data for clues on the recovery.

Bank of America Corp (BAC.N), Intel Corp (INTC.O), and General Electric (GE.N) are among several Dow components due to post their quarterly scorecards.

The economic calendar also has plenty of indicators for investors to chew on, including June retail sales, the Producer Price Index and the Consumer Price Index, industrial production, weekly jobless claims and housing starts.

Any negative surprise will add fuel to what is shaping up to be the market's first significant pullback since the Standard & Poor's 500 shot up from a 12-year low in March.

"It looks to me like the market might be vulnerable to a correction," said Richard Sparks, senior equities analyst at Schaeffer's Investment Research in Cincinnati.

"Earnings are probably the key factor" this week, Sparks added. "People are going to be looking to see if there's any mention of a turnaround in earnings."

Last week, U.S. stock investors showed high anxiety about the start of the latest earnings season. The market drifted lower and broke through key technical support despite Alcoa Inc (AA.N) kicking off the reporting season on Wednesday with a smaller-than-expected quarterly loss.

The benchmark S&P 500 .SPX had rallied as much as 40 percent from the 12-year closing low of March 9. But it met some headwinds in May and June that stalled the sharp run-up.

The S&P 500 has lost more than 7 percent from its recovery peak in early June. That puts it on the cusp of a long-awaited correction, defined as a drop of at least 10 percent from a recent high.

Last week, all three major U.S. stock indexes fell: The Dow Jones industrial average .DJI slipped 1.6 percent, the S&P 500 .SPX dropped 1.9 percent and the Nasdaq Composite Index .IXIC lost 2.3 percent.

BANKS, COMPUTERS AND HARLEYS

The earnings spotlight will fall mostly on banks this week since their rebound kicked off the spring rally following news of a surprisingly strong start to 2009 and reassuring results from the government's stress tests.

In the banking sector, investors will first hear from Goldman Sachs (GS.N) on Tuesday, followed by JPMorgan (JPM.N) on Thursday, and then Bank of America (BAC.N) and Citigroup (C.N) on Friday.

Another marquee name on Friday's earnings roster is GE, whose businesses include manufacturing, finance and the media/entertainment sector.