Billionaire Bill Ackman spotted the Covid storm early. Markets ignored it. He didn’t. Over 10 days in early 2020, his firm Pershing Square Capital Management snapped up credit default swaps on corporate bonds. Notional value: $74 billion. Cost: $27 million. Ten days later, worth $2.6 billion. A 9,500% return. He cashed out as stocks plunged 30%, then loaded up on beaten-down names like Hilton and Lowe’s. Those bets tripled in value over the next year and a half. Yahoo Finance detailed the move this week, drawing from Ackman’s recent chat with Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev on Pershing Square’s YouTube channel. Ackman started personal. His father, Larry, battled lung cancer and other ills. High risk if the virus hit. But soon the math shifted to markets. The World Health Organization called pandemic on March 11, 2020. Ackman moved faster. ‘There was this massive storm coming. We could see the storm, but everyone else was playing on a beach,’ he said. Credit default swaps act like insurance. Pay if debt defaults.…