Michael PetronBenchMark Physical Therapy to open Highway 58 clinic
BenchMark Physical Therapy announced Wednesday that it will open another clinic at 8618 Highway 58, Suite 103, on April 30.
Michael Petron, PT, DPT, will serve as the clinic director. Michael completed his Doctorate of Physical Therapy from University of North Georgia Health Sciences. He is certified in trigger point dry needling, a manual therapy technique using small, fine needles that are inserted into dysfunctional tissues. Dry needling targets the direct source of pain.
Benchmark Physical Therapy offers physical therapy, work conditioning and sports medicine with an emphasis in orthopedic rehabilitation, injured worker programs, and various other specialty programs.
Crye-Leike Real Estate Services grows to 3rd biggest agency
Crye-Leike Real Estate Services is now ranked as the nation’s third largest independently-owned real estate firm, according to the 2018 REAL Trends 500 annual ranking report.
The Memphis-based real estate agency, which operates a half dozen offices in the Chattanooga area, recorded 28,699 closed transactions corporatewide in 2017 to help move up from its 5th place ranking the previous year.
Established in 1977 by Harold Crye and Dick Leike, the company expanded into Nashville by the early 90s, and continued their expansion to develop into what is now the nation’s third-largest independently-owned real estate firm and the largest serving Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi and the Mid-South.
The company has more than 3,200 sales associates and 128 company-owned and franchise offices in a nine state region. Crye-Leike sold $6.5 billion in real estate last year.
“We anticipated there would be some challenges in real estate for 2017, inventory shortages were an issue and we saw an increase in the number of years people live in their home before moving,” Crye said. “Despite those challenges, our sales associates were able to excel and make it our best year to date.”
Oil prices rise to 3-year high
Oil prices hit a three-year high after President Donald trump tweeted that the U.S. will launch missiles at targets in Syria.
The benchmark price of U.S. crude climbed 2 percent Wednesday to $66.82 a barrel in New York. Brent crude, used to price international oils, gained 1.4 percent to $72.06 a barrel in London.
Oil prices jumped more than 3 percent Tuesday as investors got more optimistic about a possible resolution to the U.S.-China trade spat. Oil prices continue to rise after Trump said the U.S. will respond to the recent suspected chemical attack and Saudi Arabia said it intercepted missiles fired by rebels in Yemen. Fighting in the Middle East could restrict oil supplies and push prices higher.
Consumer prices rise 2.4 percent
U.S. consumer prices rose 2.4 percent in March from a year earlier, the fastest annual pace in 12 months.
The Labor Department said Wednesday that on a monthly basis, the consumer price index declined 0.1 percent in March. The index’s yearly gain, however, suggests that inflation pressures may be picking up.
Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, core prices ticked up 0.2 percent in March and 2.1 percent from a year ago. That was the biggest annual increase for core prices since February 2017.
The gains partly reflect the impact of changes in mobile phone services costs, which fell sharply last March after several carriers introduced unlimited data plans. That drop has lifted year-over-year price changes, boosting the annual gains.
Still, economists said there were signs elsewhere of rising prices. Hotel prices jumped 2.3 percent in March, while rents increased 0.3 percent. Hospital services costs rose 4.9 percent.
“U.S. inflation is warming up rather than heating up,” Sal Guatieri, an economist at BMO Capital Markets, said.
Fed discussed faster rate hikes
Federal Reserve officials signaled rising confidence last month that a strong economy will lift inflation closer to its 2 percent target and that they may accelerate the Fed’s pace of interest rate hikes as a result.
The minutes of the Fed’s March 20-21 meeting, which were released Wednesday, showed that a number of participants believed that a stronger outlook for economic activity plus rising inflation implied that the path for the Fed’s key interest rate in coming years could be “slightly steeper” than expected.
The minutes showed that some Fed officials felt it might eventually choose to revise the Fed’s policy statement to indicate a need to move past an “accommodative” level of rates to one that restrained economic activity slightly to keep inflation in check.
Private analysts noted that this discussion in the minutes marked the first time since the Great Recession that the central bank has discussed the possibility of adjusting interest rates to actually restrain economic growth.