TORONTO (Reuters) - Canadian banks will show some ugly end-of-year numbers in the next two weeks and the more interesting bit — their 2009 outlooks — are bound to be vague.

Two bank warnings about fourth-quarter charges this past week helped to sink the benchmark Toronto Stock Exchange index, with financial issues logging stunning double-digit percentage drops on Thursday. The S&P/TSX composite index fell 9.9 percent in the week to 8,155.33.

Tomorrow, Bank of Montreal will be first of the Big Six banks to report results for the August-October quarter.

So are the worst assumptions already priced in to the bank stocks? Or will the full suite of results send investors scurrying for cover again?

"They've all taken such a pummelling here that I think a lot of bad news is already embedded in the prices," said Bob Gorman, chief portfolio strategist at TD Waterhouse. "Any news has been taken as very bad and an excuse to sell further. I do think it's excessive."

Analysts generally expect a 10 percent to 12 percent drop in quarterly bank profits from the year-earlier period, excluding one-time items. That masks big differences, however. Profit at Royal Bank of Canada is seen rising, while Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce's core earnings could drop substantially, based on data from Reuters Estimates.

Bank of Montreal and CIBC, which reports on December 4, are seen taking write-downs due to the falling value of their complex credit holdings.

"On any kind of metrics we're looking at, those two seem to be the ones that are, for their size, disproportionately larger exposed," said Chris Lowe, a portfolio manager at fund manager AIC Ltd in Burlington, Ontario.

The failure of Lehman Brothers Holdings in September will have caused "huge stress" in certain indexes the banks use to gauge prices for securities, Lowe said.

Write-down estimates for CIBC are as high as C$2.3 billion, because of the dropping value of its hedges with bond insurers. CIBC may avoid some write-downs by using new accounting rules for illiquid securities.

Lower fees from wealth management and higher provisions for bad loans took their toll on the banks in the quarter, analysts say, and there will be market-related trading losses, as shown this past week by Toronto-Dominion Bank and Bank of Nova Scotia .