By Rita Nazareth and Jeff Sutherland May 3 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. stock futures fell, indicating the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index may drop for a second day, as a stronger dollar drove down shares of commodity producers. Newmont Mining Corp. and Exxon Mobil Corp. helped pace declines in metal and oil companies. Chesapeake Energy Corp. retreated 3.3 percent after the natural-gas driller posted a net loss. Pfizer Inc. dropped 1.9 percent as sales of its Lipitor cholesterol pill, the best-selling drug in the world in 2010, missed analysts’ estimates. Sears Holdings Corp., the largest U.S. department-store chain, tumbled 8.5 percent after reporting a decline in comparable-store sales. S&P 500 futures dropped 0.3 percent to 1,353.7 at 9:16 a.m. in New York. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures fell 29 points, or 0.2 percent, to 12,735. Both gauges retreated yesterday from the highest levels since June 2008. The Dollar Index increased 0.2 percent to 73.128. “Markets have been overbought for a long time,” said Radu Margoses, senior sales trader at Newedge Group in Zurich. “We’re getting a sense that companies may struggle to maintain profitability into the middle of the year.” The S&P 500 has risen 8.2 percent this year through yesterday amid government stimulus measures and higher-than- estimated corporate profits. Earnings-per-share beat estimates at about three-quarters of the 334 companies in the S&P 500 that reported results since April 11, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. U.S. Dollar Rallies The yen and dollar rose against most major counterparts as concern about reprisal attacks following the death of Osama bin Laden boosted demand for the relative safety of the Japanese and U.S. currencies. The MSCI Emerging Markets Index dropped 1.3 percent as India’s central bank raised interest rates by a more- than-estimated 0.5 percentage point today after forecasting inflation will stay at an “elevated level.” Factory orders rose 2 percent in March after a 0.1 percent decline the previous month, according to the median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey of economists before the Commerce Department reports the figure today. Some energy and raw-material producers fell as oil, silver and gold prices declined. Newmont Mining, the largest U.S. gold producer, dropped 0.4 percent to $57.35. Exxon slumped 0.4 percent to $86.60. Chesapeake retreated 3.3 percent to $32.14. The most active U.S. natural-gas driller reported a first-quarter loss after losing $725 million on energy hedging contracts. The average price of gas during the quarter on the New York Mercantile Exchange fell 19 percent to $4.197 per million British thermal units from $4.989 in the first three months of 2010. Pfizer Slumps Pfizer, the world’s biggest drugmaker, slumped 1.9 percent to $20.62. Lipitor had sales of $2.39 billion in the first quarter, falling short of the $2.55 billion average estimate of five analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Sales will decline by more than half next year after generic-drug makers flood the U.S. market with cheaper copies, according to eight analysts surveyed. Chief Executive Officer Ian Read is selling units and cutting jobs to prepare for the loss of U.S. patent protection in November of Lipitor. Sears Holdings declined 8.5 percent to $77. The largest U.S. department-store chain said domestic first-quarter comparable-store sales fell 3.6 percent, led by declines in appliances, apparel and consumer electronics. --With assistance from Giles Broom in Zurich. Editor: Michael Regan To contact the reporters on this story: Rita Nazareth in New York at rnazareth@bloomberg.net; Jeff Sutherland in New York at rnazareth@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Nick Baker at nbaker7@bloomberg.net.

Source