Stock price when the opinion was issued
Structured nicely, low cost. Total market includes not just the top 500, but also the Russell 1000 of smaller stocks. He'd prefer it over the S&P 500. He doesn't like the crowded trades, such as Microsoft. He wants to avoid market cap at this point in the cycle.
Vanguard is a premier ETF provider. The pricing is right around 13 basis points. It's the total U.S. index (including big tech like Amazon, Microsoft and Google) which is free-float market capitalization where blocks are held by insiders, which is a good sign. However, to create the capacity for these ETFs to accept a lot of capital the index calculations used these free-flow capitalizations, which under-represents companies with large insider holdings.
With VUN, you get pretty much the entire US market; not too expensive at 16 bps. Keep in mind that the USD version, VTI, has a MER of 3 bps; be mindful, too, of foreign currency and US estate issues.
Over 3700 positions, market-cap weighted. Top 10 names represent about 20% of the portfolio. Lots of exposure to the tech space. Not all that different from the S&P 500.
XQLT considers quality; it looks at the balance sheet of the companies it holds. Charges a 31-point MER. VUN charges only 16 points in the MER, but XQLT is worth paying more for, because it holds quality stocks and will outperform, whereas VUN is based on market-cap.