Bears are an unloved and often unappreciated species on Wall Street. Yet despite their sour disposition and inveterate pessimism toward equities, bull markets wouldn’t be possible without those brave participants willing to take the opposite side of a bullish trade. In today’s report we’ll examine the extremely high levels of bearish sentiment among institutional and retail investors alike. According to one poll, investors are as bearish as they've been since the 2008 credit crash. But I’ll make the case here that this high level of pessimism is setting the stage for a potentially huge short-covering