Hedge Fund-Lite Trades Are Back From the Dead With $153 Billion

Even in the most vanilla corners of institutional money management, an appetite for leverage is quietly returning.

Known as equity extensions, these strategies can turn a $100 investment into $130 in long bets and $30 in shorts — giving managers more room to express their views by scaling up favored stock-market positions and betting against others, all while keeping the same net exposure to the benchmark.