ETF Prime · Sep 29, 2026
With Bill Perkins, Founder and CIO of Skylar Capital Management
The Skylar Electricity Futures ETF, ticker MWHS, launched at the end of June as the first ETF to hold US electricity futures contracts. It owns a rolling 12-month strip of power contracts in two grids: ERCOT in Texas and PJM in the mid-Atlantic.
Investors who want exposure to the power needs of AI usually buy utilities, energy stocks, data center REITs or chipmakers. Bill Perkins said the better value right now is in the electricity itself, because new power plants take years to permit and build while demand from data centers, factories and eventually robots arrives much faster.
"And I would believe that demand is going to lead supply for quite some time."
Bill Perkins, Founder and CIO of Skylar Capital Management, on ETF Prime, started as a screen clerk on the New York Mercantile Exchange trading floor, traded natural gas in Houston, including at John Arnold's Centaurus Energy, and has since developed a solar project in Nevada and small battery projects in Texas.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it.
Here are the 10 arguments that matter.
Key Takeaways
Power demand is likely to run ahead of new supply for years, because demand arrives fast and plants arrive slowly
Turbines are sold out until 2031, he said, and copper, transformers and interest rates are all higher
10 million humanoid robots would need roughly 3 to 6 gigawatts of generating capacity, by his estimate
The fund settles against daily cash prices instead of rolling out early, so it captures price spikes in the current month
The main risk is timing, not the thesis: data center moratoriums cut this year's demand projections in half
Community pushback is about who benefits, not only about power and water use
Electricity belongs in the energy basket beside crude oil and natural gas, he said
1. From Trading Floor to Skylar
The host opened by asking for Perkins's background and an introduction to Skylar Capital Management.
He began on the NYMEX floor and worked his way to natural gas trading in Houston
"I started off as a screen clerk on the New York Mercantile Exchange when people used to do open outcry." — Bill Perkins
Perkins said he moved to Houston to trade natural gas futures, options and derivatives, working at Coastal and El Paso and then at Centaurus Energy. When John Arnold retired from Centaurus to work on philanthropy, Perkins started Skylar Capital Management, which does much the same trading he has done for years. He called himself "pretty much a dinosaur in this business."
He has also built power projects
He has developed a solar project in Nevada called Townsite, is working on Townsite 2, and has built a couple of small battery projects in Texas, each under 10 megawatts.
