Marty Weiner is railing against Wall Street’s hubris.
The street-smart Brooklyn-born portfolio manager, who made history in 2008 by delivering a 54.2 percent total return in a year when the stock market was down 37.0 percent, is at it again with his discipline of shorting the broader stock indexes and individual stocks.
The 76-year-old East New York native, who is still working out of a ground-floor condo in Cobble Hill flanked by brownstones on tree-lined Clinton Street, has delivered a total return of 10.40 percent since April 26, which marked the peak of the recent rally, while the S&P 500 index has fallen 9.01 percent.. This Brooklyn College grad is shooting out the lights yet again.
Weiner’s Comstock Capital Value Fund has the same approach as the big boys John Paulson and Jim Chanos: it bets market prices will fall, borrowing stocks today and hoping to replace them at lower cost in the future, pocketing the difference.
“We are geared to make money in a down market,” Weiner said, with a gruff slur from past surgery for mouth cancer.
But, unlike the big boys, Comstock plays to the little guy on the street without charging high performance fees or requiring a large upfront deposit. Investors can withdraw all their money at any time without a penalty.
“The overall problem is that there is too much debt, which will result in slow economic growth and having recessions more often. This justifies a much lower price-earnings multiple on stocks,” explains Weiner, the former Grumman Corp. pension manger said. The fund is growing fast as individual investors deposit fresh money. Comstock has nearly doubled its assets since the end of 2008, to $115 million, even though 2009 was a down year.

