Wall Street: Hedge funds raise bearish bets at fastest pace in two years

Bears, driven almost into extinction amid the relentless equity rally and January's retail-fomented short squeeze, are staging a comeback

For the first time in a long time, betting on turbulence in US stocks is paying off. It’s a notable break from past patterns that some view as the first chapter in a broader story of pain for risk markets.
 

After more than a year of futility, short sellers just scored their fifth straight week of positive returns, their best run since 2018. In another development that has portended trouble in the past, individual stocks have started moving around in unison, a sign of shared anxiety that has pushed realized correlations to the highest in a year. At the index