General Motors Company GM 1.97% has announced it will be temporarily shutting down four of its North American plants due to parts shortages caused by the recent earthquakes in Japan.

The operations that will be impacted are GM’s car plants in Lordstown, Ohio; Fairfax, Kansas; Spring Hill, Tennessee and Flex Oshawa, Ontario. Each of these plants will be shut down for two weeks starting on April 25.

According to the company, GM shareholders shouldn’t worry about lost production. The company expects to make up for lost production by the end of the year and the shutdown “is not expected to have any material impact” on GM’s year-end numbers.

While the Japan earthquakes have had minimal impact on the U.S. auto industry, other auto names were more directly affected.

Toyota Motor Corp (ADR) TM 1.22%, Honda Motor Co Ltd (ADR) HMC 0.99% and Nissan all operate assembly plants in the region of Japan impacted by the quake. Earlier this week, Citi analyst Arifuma Yoshida said…

Click here to continue reading

Want to learn more about how to profit off the stock market? Or maybe you just want to be able to look sophisticated in front of your coworkers when they ask you what you are reading on your Kindle, and you’d prefer to tell them “Oh, I’m just reading a book about stock market analysis,” rather than the usual “Oh, I’m just looking at pics of my ex-girlfriend on Facebook.” For these reasons and more, check out my book, Beating Wall Street with Common Sense. I don’t have a degree in finance; I have a degree in neuroscience. You don’t have to predict what stocks will do if you can predict what traders will do and be one step ahead of them. I made a 400% return in the stock market over five years using only basic principles of psychology and common sense. Beating Wall Street with Common Sense is now available on Amazon, and tradingcommonsense.com is always available on your local internet!