Picking a single winning stock in a sector is hard. Sometimes the better trade isn’t a company — it’s the theme itself. ETFs bundle dozens of companies into a single ticker, and trading one as a stock perp means you’re taking a position on an entire sector, region, or macro theme in one move, with the same 24/7 access and leverage as any single-name stock perp on BTSE.
This article covers three very different flavors of that idea: a single-country equity bet, a commodity-adjacent mining basket, and a sector-wide energy play.
Regional Equity Exposure
Brazil ETF (EWZ-PERP) tracks the MSCI Brazil 25/50 Index — 56 of Brazil’s largest, most liquid publicly traded companies, managed by BlackRock with roughly $8.9B in assets. The fund is up about 11% year-to-date and 24% over the past year, yet still trades near $35, only modestly above where it stood five years ago. That combination — real recent momentum on top of a fund that’s gone nowhere for years — is exactly the setup that gets both bulls and short-term traders paying attention. Trade EWZ-PERP · Full breakdown
The Nuclear & Uranium Theme
Sprott Uranium Miners ETF (URNM-PERP) gives traders broad exposure to global uranium mining companies in a single position rather than picking individual miners. Uranium entered 2026 with renewed momentum as spot prices moved back above $100/lb, driven by tightening supply, surging demand from countries like India and China, and renewed nuclear policy support as governments look for reliable baseload power for AI data centers. Trade URNM-PERP · Full breakdown
The Energy Sector Comeback
Energy Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLE-PERP) tracks large integrated U.S. oil and gas majors within the S&P 500 — one of the most liquid sector ETFs in the world, with roughly $38.7B in assets. What makes XLE interesting in 2026 is that it’s outperformed expectations (+27.5% YTD) even with WTI crude trading around $64/barrel, a level that would historically have pressured energy earnings. Analysts attribute the rally to a rotation into value and income-generating sectors, strong cash flow from majors like Exxon and Chevron, and geopolitical supply risk keeping a premium baked into prices. Trade XLE-PERP · Full breakdown
Broad Market Index Exposure
QQQ (QQQ-PERP) tracks the Nasdaq-100 — a concentrated, high-beta bet on mega-cap tech and AI names like NVIDIA, Apple, Microsoft, and Broadcom, since the index excludes financials entirely. SPY (SPY-PERP) tracks the S&P 500 — 500 companies across all 11 sectors, the closest thing to a pure read on the broader U.S. economy in one ticker. Both hit fresh record highs together in August 2026 heading into a closely watched Fed decision, and the two are more correlated than most “diversification” narratives suggest, since the same mega-cap names carry heavy weight in both indexes. The real divergence is in the tails: QQQ tends to outperform in tech-led rallies and underperform harder in tech-led selloffs, while SPY’s broader diversification smooths both directions. Some traders go long one and short the other to isolate a pure tech-vs-broad-market view. Full breakdown
Leveraged Sector ETF
SOXL (SOXL-PERP) is the Direxion Daily Semiconductor Bull 3X Shares ETF — already engineered to deliver 3x the daily move of the 30 largest U.S. semiconductor names before you ever touch BTSE’s own leverage on top. That’s an important distinction from every other ticker in this article: trading SOXL-PERP with additional leverage means compounding leverage on top of an already-leveraged product, not just applying leverage to a normal stock or ETF. It’s a tool built for short-term, thesis-driven trades on the AI chip cycle, not a buy-and-hold position — daily rebalancing means its multi-day returns can diverge sharply from “3x the index.” Full breakdown
Why Trade an Index or Sector as a Perp Instead of a Single Stock
The appeal of an ETF perp is diversification within a single position: you’re not betting everything on one company’s earnings report, corporate action, or CEO decision — you’re betting on a broader thesis (Brazilian equities, uranium demand, U.S. energy majors) playing out across dozens of names at once. That doesn’t eliminate risk; it changes its shape: single-company blowups matter less, but sector-wide and macro shocks (a commodity price collapse, a regional currency crisis, a change in nuclear policy) hit the whole position at once with nowhere to hide inside a diversified basket.
Start Trading Index & ETF Perps
All six confirmed contracts above — EWZ, URNM, XLE, QQQ, SPY, and SOXL — trade 24/7 on BTSE with up to 50x leverage, funded in USDT. Explore the full markets page or head to the perps guide for the complete walkthrough of how stock perps work.
