How did Bill Perkins make his money trading natural gas?

Bill Perkins started as a clerk on the New York Mercantile Exchange floor, became an over-the-counter broker, and moved to Houston after 1995 deregulation to trade natural gas derivatives. He describes traders like himself as insurers: buyers afraid of winter price spikes hedge by buying futures, he sells them, and because the winter risk premium usually bled away, most of his money came from being short natural gas.

• The hosts cite reports that Perkins made close to $1 billion in profit for the firm he traded for.
• Perkins says his fund has swung between down 50% and up 250% in a year on roughly $100 million to $250 million.
• Perkins says that knowing what he knows now he would have gone into equities, where giant funds earn fees just for running.

▸In their words

“We're kind of glorified insurance agents.” Bill Perkins · at 2:25 — open in the transcript →

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on My First Million (2026-11-02). Read the whole episode summary →

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