Cramer's 'Stop Trading!': Altria Lights Up

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- According to a Wall Street journal article, said Jim Cramer on CNBC's "Stop Trading!" segment on Friday, the number of people smoking is actually increasing. As shocking as this statistic might be, it does have an investable angle, and that's "pure play" Altria(MO Quote), he said.

Altria, which Cramer owns for his Action Alerts PLUS charitable trust, sells at 10 times earnings and has a 7% yield, said Cramer. He said the multiple is so low because smoking was declining, but now that it's increasing, "the market could be growing again for tobacco."

"This should be going down every single year, but no, the article said it's clearly going up," said Cramer. "The pure play on that is the Marlboro Man."

Turning to retail stocks, Cramer said we're "beginning to get normalized earnings for retail." He said that even though Nordstrom(JWN Quote), which he's liked in the past, didn't have a bad report, it's expensive.

"Even if everything goes well," he said, "you're paying 18, 19, 20 times earnings for a decent retailer, but never anything that I thought was going to shoot the lights out."

He said Nordstrom "should struggle here."

As for housing, Cramer said all we hear is "doom and gloom," but Whirlpool(WHR Quote) and Masco(MAS Quote) are "real signs for housing" because they don't "sell a lot of stuff if housing's bad."

-- Written by Rebecca Corvino in New York.

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