Vanguard US Total Mkt Ind ETF (VUN.TO)

Total stock market index. 70% made up of large caps, remaining 30% made up of 1000's of mid- to small-caps. The whole package. iShares has some offerings as well. Many ways to play.

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.

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.

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.

Do you prefer this one over VV? Either one is fine. The VV has 120 stocks more than the S&P 500 so it goes a little more into the mid-cap space and VUN is the total market.

(A Top Pick Mar 29/18, Up 18%) There are almost 4000 securities. It has some small and mid-cap juice to it. This is the way to enter the US market.

US exposure, total US market. There is no currency hedge. The US dollar has been relatively strong relative to the Canadian. The US market is the most expensive in the world and over the next 10 years it may underperform emerging markets. He would look at ZPW-T instead.

(Past Top Pick, Sept. 21, 2017, Up 23%) He's been transitioning to small- and mid-cap and this has performed well.

(Past Top Pick, Sept.1, 2017, Up 20%) It covers a broad swath of the U.S. market and purely benefits from a booming US economy.

VTI-N is the total market index in the US. They took that and wrapped it into a Canadian version, VUN-T and the difference in price is not relevant. It is subject to double taxation, however.

HXS-T vs. XUS-T vs. VUN-T. HXF is the financial swap based ETF and the swap fee has a fee of zero. It is Canadian bank that is doing the swaps. When you sell it down the line you will have compounded the yield. There are reasons to buy into Canadian financials at this time. HXF is a good idea.

Sell this and Buy the hedged version? He just took off of his Canadian hedges today. The Cdn$ has had a strong run up, and there are built-in expectations by the Bank of Canada that the Cd$ is going to go higher. Thinks Bank of Canada has gotten a little ahead of itself and the inflation and growth forecasts for next year are a little too robust. He wouldn’t be worried about the Cdn$ going up further. If you want to be long the US market, you want to stay with the unhedged version.