Cramer's 'Stop Trading!': Regions Financial

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- On Thursday's "Stop Trading!" segment on CNBC, Jim Cramer focused on banks and the news that hedge fund manager John Paulson had bought 35 million shares of Regions Financial(RF Quote).

"Everybody's chatting about Bank of America(BAC Quote)," a stock Cramer owns for his Action Alerts PLUS charitable trust, but Regions "is the big trade," he said.

Cramer said Regions' management is "not so great" and its bad loans "are really off the charts," but Paulson bought it anyway. "This man understands the business," said Cramer. "The guy was short mortgages! Regions Financial is a living, breathing mortgage."

As for Citigroup(C Quote), Cramer said the "government's up huge on this," yet FDIC Chair Sheila Blair is intent on getting rid of Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit. "Let him do his job," said Cramer.

Cramer's retail play off of Wal-Mart's(WMT Quote) earnings report is JCPenney(JCP Quote), which he thinks "is going to repeat what Wal-Mart did."

Finally, Cramer pointed to a Morgan Joseph piece about Palm(PALM Quote) that said that orders for its Pre phone are down.

-- Written by Rebecca Corvino in New York.