Stock price when the opinion was issued
Defence is expensive. This ETF is aerospace and defence. If you want to be more precise, Raytheon (RTN-N) is a good way, which is focused on cyber defence, missile defence, has the most international sales exposure. He likes the theme of defence spending. You take out some of the idiosyncratic risks by buying this one.
ITA-N vs. XAR-N He knows the defence sector. A problem in defence is the huge run-up in Boeing, which dominates defence. ITA has a cap system in place to deal with this over-concentration in a few defence stocks, but XAR is odd because it's equal-weighted, therefore carries more risk. He prefers ITA.
Seasonally you normally see defence stocks doing very well from about October right through until about the end of the year, and then they tend to take a bit of a break from January through to March. They then take another move to the upside until May. Technically, it is currently running into some overhead resistance with a small downward trend.