Order a large gas turbine from GE Vernova today and, on Brian Casey's account, you would be lucky to take delivery by 2030. Almost nobody else builds them.
Most funds aimed at the artificial-intelligence build-out own the chip designers and the hyperscalers. Westwood's new one owns neither. It buys the equipment, the fuel and the contractors behind them, and it writes call options over half the portfolio to pay a yield while the build runs.
"These are the things if you drop them on your foot you break your leg. I mean this is this is picks and shovels."
Casey has been chief executive of Westwood Holdings Group for more than two decades and has worked there for 34 of the firm's 43 years; it manages about $18 billion. The fund launching the day after this interview, the Westwood Salient Enhanced Power and Infrastructure ETF, is also the first ETF ever listed on the Texas Stock Exchange.
The full segment is covered here so you can skip it.
Here are the 11 insights that matter.
👤 Guest: Brian Casey, CEO of Westwood Holdings Group, the publicly traded Dallas asset and wealth manager, where he has worked for 34 years
🎙️ Host: Nate Geraci, President of OTR Media and of the investment advisory firm NovaDius Wealth Management
🧩 Other segments: Todd Rosenbluth, Head of Research at VettaFi
📰 Published: 16 September 2026 on YouTube
🔴 YouTube | 🔗 Episode page | ⏱️ length not available
Key Takeaways
The Texas Stock Exchange's first-ever ETF listing goes to an $18B Dallas manager, not a national brand
Casey picked it partly because an issuer there can choose among three market-making arrangements
The fund deliberately owns none of the chips or hyperscalers that have already run
Its holdings are natural gas, utilities, solar, wind, turbines, servers and the contractors that assemble them
The equipment bottleneck is the thesis: a large gas turbine ordered now may not arrive until 2030
Investors are paid roughly 5% a year, monthly, from call options written over about half the portfolio
The calls are struck 6% to 10% out of the money, so some of the upside is kept
Casey says JPMorgan now has more financial services staff in Texas than in New York
Data centers have lost the public argument, and the industry did it to itself
His friend who runs one told him the industry has done a terrible job explaining what it is doing
Nuclear is on his watch list but out of the portfolio, because he thinks it is priced ahead of itself
The exchange is forging a cannon to replace its opening bell
1. Westwood at 43
Geraci opened on the firm before the fund, since Westwood is a publicly traded asset manager most ETF listeners will not know.
"Sure. Well, we're an asset management and wealth management business. We collectively manage about $18 billion and we've been in business for 43 years." The client base is a mix of institutional investors, advisers and some private wealth clients.
Casey started out of college as a financial planner, spent about seven years at a trust company, and has been at Westwood for 34 years — more than two decades of that as chief executive. He said he has had just about every job in the firm.
His account of what a chief executive is for is culture rather than strategy: "And what I feel like my main role is really to foster the culture that we've developed over a really long time." The firm has been named a best place to work for 11 years running, he said, which takes real effort.
Some of his colleagues he has worked with for two or three decades.
2. What an Exchange Provides
Geraci's opening question was the basic one: what does an exchange actually do for an ETF, and why would the choice matter?
Casey's answer starts by conceding that it usually does not: "Most people think about what the ETF is more than they think about where it's where it's listed." He doubted his own clients could name the venue for Westwood's existing funds.
The structural point is that listing in the United States has been a two-venue market for a long time, split between the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. A third entrant, on his reading, should improve price discovery and add liquidity for investors.
The concrete difference he names is market making: "You as a issuer can choose one of three different options from a market making perspective." If you want an experienced market maker, he said, you pay a little extra and you can have one — which matters most at launch. "And that's what we love about the Texas Stock Exchange."
Pressed on how he compares venues generally, Casey was candid that nobody knows yet. There is very little difference to the investor and not a great deal to the issuer either, he said; active ETFs have only been running at full speed since 2019, there are about four venues to choose from, and Westwood intends to try three of them and compare notes in a year.
3. Why List in Texas
The listing is the news: the Westwood Salient Enhanced Power and Infrastructure ETF, ticker PWRX, is the first ETF to launch on the Texas Stock Exchange, where live trading began in July.
Casey's first reason is identity — the listing aligns with the firm's Texas roots — and his second is that the subject of the fund is happening outside his window.
"It may slow down but all of the power that is going to be needed to fuel all these things is going to have to be built", he said of the data center build-out, which he described as continuing despite the recent controversy around it.
He credits deliberate state policy rather than chance. Austin has made it easy and inexpensive to incorporate, he said, has built up the business court so Texas can compete with Delaware, and levies no state income tax. Companies are leaving states that would traditionally have landed these projects.
The exchange, on his account, is the financial expression of that: price discovery, competition and lower prices for the investor.
4. Nothing But Cranes
Geraci pointed out that NYSE and Nasdaq have both opened Texas operations, and asked whether that marks the state's arrival as a financial center.
Casey's framing: "They're economic bets." The NYSE Texas office is a short distance from Westwood's building and Nasdaq's is not much further; all of them, he said, are in the same part of Dallas.
Westwood has been in the Crescent, an iconic Dallas building, for 36 years. "I used to look out my window and see, nothing. And now I see nothing but cranes."
"Goldman Sachs has got a campus coming out of the ground that's going to house 5,000 people." Morgan Stanley, he said, has just broken ground directly in front of Westwood for a tower costing over a billion dollars.
"JPMorgan has more financial services professionals in Texas than they do in New York." All the Canadian banks have moved there too, on his account.
5. Picks and Shovels
The fund's premise is that the money has already been made in the visible parts of the AI trade and the durable part is what sits behind them.
"And I think, every successful ETF begins with a problem that you're trying to solve." The problem, as he defines it, is finding companies with durable competitive advantages, strong free cash flow generation, pricing power and the ability to compound value over time.
His view is that the cyclical opportunity has already been discovered. The chips and the hyperscalers have had tremendous runs over the last few years; what is behind them has not.
What the fund owns instead: natural gas, utilities, solar, wind, large gas turbines, servers, and the companies and people who assemble all of it. He called that a 10-year build.
"These are the things if you drop them on your foot you break your leg. I mean this is this is picks and shovels." It requires engineering, skilled labor and, in some cases, large gas turbines.
The capacity numbers he cited are the argument. He put the additional power needed by 2030 at about 4 gigawatts to run what exists today, against roughly 2,000 gigawatts of projects sitting in line waiting to be connected — a queue he says takes 10 years and more to clear.
The equipment bottleneck is the sharpest version of it. Order a large gas turbine from GE Vernova today, he said, and "you'd be lucky to get it by 2030." There is essentially nobody else who builds them.
He was explicit about what the fund is not doing: picking between Nvidia and the hyperscalers. "That's not what we're doing."
6. Paid 5% to Wait
Every Westwood ETF writes covered calls, and Geraci pushed on the obvious objection: if you have high conviction in a 10-year build, why cap your upside?
The structure, in Casey's words: "We're not going to write them on the entire portfolio. We'll write them on about half the portfolio."
The strikes are set well out of the money, so the fund keeps most of a rally. "They're going to write calls that are, 6 8 10% out of the money."
The portfolio is split by volatility. Utilities and natural gas holdings do not move around much and are the natural candidates for calls; the rest are what he called true growth stories.
The target payout is about 5% a year, paid monthly, and the monthly cadence is deliberate. When Westwood launched its ETFs it found clients strongly preferred monthly income, so every fund in the range pays that way.
His framing is that the yield is compensation for a long wait: investors get paid while the secular build-out runs.
7. Why Active in Power
The fund is actively managed, by Westwood's Houston-based energy team, and Geraci asked why the category needs an active manager.
Casey's answer is that the two things that move this sector — politics and technology — both change faster than an index can be reconstituted.
On politics, his example is a hypothetical halt to data center development in Texas. He does not expect one, he said, but some people are pushing for a slowdown, and that is something a manager has to watch.
On technology, his example is water. Closed-loop cooling systems did not exist a few years ago and now do, and they will keep improving. "They're coming out with closed loop systems now so that they can not be such water hogs, which is what some of the folks in Texas are calling them."
"And so we've been managing money now for 43 years." Experience, and specifically being in Texas as long as the firm has, is where he thinks the edge is.
8. The Data Center Backlash
Geraci raised community pushback and political consternation about AI infrastructure as a risk to the strategy. Casey's answer blamed the industry rather than its critics.
"Well, I have a very good friend who's the CEO of a data center company, and he will be the first one to tell me what a terrible job that his industry has done of explaining to the world what it is they're trying to do."
"And they've got to become better communicators, more open communicators." They have to engage with the cities they want to build in, he said, and explain how those places benefit.
His read of public skepticism is that people assume the whole thing is a build-out for Microsoft, Amazon Web Services and the other large cloud providers, and nothing more. He thinks a great deal more comes out of it, and named health care as the area where AI's effect over the next five years will be most visible.
He also engaged with the safety debate, citing an Elon Musk suggestion that the AI labs grade one another's work. His own position is that the technology is needed and the building should continue, but that the industry has to improve both the message and the guardrails.
9. Nuclear, Not Yet
Geraci noted that the PowerX portfolio is weighted toward conventional energy and asked about nuclear.
Casey said the technology is evolving to the point where generating nuclear power no longer requires a project on the scale of Three Mile Island, and that smaller reactors are becoming more mainstream.
He is watching the nuclear providers and would not rule them out, but has no plans to own them now, because he thinks the group is priced ahead of itself.
His comparison is with semiconductors, and it comes with a warning about extrapolation. "I've been doing this for 40 plus years and I would tell you that chips are cyclical. They don't go straight up forever."
"we have a saying that trees don't grow to the sky." He listed Cisco in the 1990s, the crash of 1987 and the global financial crisis as things he worked through.
His defense of active management comes out of that: the job is processing what changes around you and making good decisions for investors, which he described as the fun of the business.
10. The Rest of the Lineup
Westwood runs three ETFs with nearly $500 million between them, plus a partnership, and Casey walked through how the range was designed.
The design principle was to ask investors what was missing rather than to add scale to what already exists. What they wanted, he said, was something unique and different, and income. Covered calls are in every fund as a result.
The first fund was MDST, a portfolio of midstream energy companies and pipelines that already carry a generous yield, with calls written over the larger names. If a holding is called away, the manager writes on the next one. "So I think in our first year, we delivered a double-digit return for clients just from the yield." Energy also ran, so the fund itself rose 25% to 30%.
The second is an enhanced-income version of a traditional energy portfolio, similar in composition to the largest energy index fund but with calls written against it.
The third is YLDW, built off a long-running Westwood income mutual fund rated four or five stars, and managed dynamically between sectors the firm thinks are undervalued and overvalued.
The partnership with Webs Investments is a volatility-responsive overlay on two index exposures. The idea, from one of the industry's pioneers, is that volatility can be a friend or a foe: "And when volatility is high, that is generally when you want to be less exposed to the market. And when volatility is low, you that's when you want to be more exposed to the market." One product applies the formula to the S&P 500 and the other to the Nasdaq-100, stepping on the gas when volatility is low and off when it is high. Westwood is bringing both in-house.
Two more are coming: "I can't say the name yet but we're in the process of converting one of our mutual funds to an income oriented ETF and then we've registered another one."
11. A Bell, Then a Cannon
Geraci closed on the launch ceremony, and got the best detail of the segment.
The founder of the Texas Stock Exchange, Jim Lee, will be at Westwood's office, with Fox News present, for a bell ringing at 8:30 in the morning and a second one around three in the afternoon.
"So, there is a cannon that is in the process of being forged right now that will be part of the Texas stock exchange experience." It is not ready, so the launch uses a bell.
The exchange moves into a new headquarters next year, with approval for a ticker display that will wrap around the building.
Geraci's verdict on the cannon was that it is certainly a differentiator.
Bonus Insights
Westwood's three existing ETFs hold nearly $500 million between them. With PowerX and the two Webs products coming in-house, the platform reaches six, before the mutual fund conversion and the registered fund behind it.
Casey apologized mid-answer for jumping ahead of Geraci's question, on the grounds that he was too excited about the launch to wait for it.
His observation about the medium itself: podcasts did not exist 20 years ago, and now an audience turns up to hear what he called old guys like him talk about new products. That, he said, is part of why ETFs are more fun to sell than mutual funds were in the 1990s.
Geraci closed by congratulating him on both the launch and the listing.
Casey's bottom line is that the investable part of the AI build-out is the physical one: the generation, the turbines and the contractors that everything else waits on, held for a decade and paid for monthly out of options premium rather than out of a rerating.
Products, Companies & Tools Mentioned
Westwood Holdings Group (Casey's firm — publicly traded, about $18 billion in assets, 43 years old, and the issuer of the first ETF listed on the Texas Stock Exchange)
Texas Stock Exchange (Began live trading in July; offers issuers a choice of three market-making arrangements, and is forging a cannon to replace its opening bell)
New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq (The duopoly Casey says the new venue breaks; both have also opened Texas operations)
GE Vernova (Effectively the only supplier of the large gas turbines his thesis depends on — order one today, he says, and you would be lucky to get it by 2030)
Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan (His evidence for Dallas as a financial center: a campus for 5,000 people, a billion-dollar tower, and more financial services staff in Texas than in New York)
Nvidia (Named as what the fund deliberately does not try to pick between, alongside the hyperscalers)
Watch the full episode:
If this was worth your time, send it to someone closer to the industry than you are.
Get the latest market chatter as it happens: