What would a Canadian dividend growth portfolio look like if you were building one from scratch today?
Welcome to this week’s MP Market Review, where we put our dividend growth investing (DGI) process into practice with real money, real positions, and real results.
Our feature article today explores how to start building a dividend growth portfolio in today’s market.
Rather than building a portfolio gradually over four years, as we did with our MP Wealth-Builder Model Portfolios, we offer a practical blueprint for putting capital to work today, with a disciplined plan to build positions over time using our DGI Alerts.
You can follow our trades as they happen or make your own investment decisions based on our research and your circumstances.
As always, we do the work. You stay in control.
IN THIS ISSUE: DGI Clipboard • DGI Scorecard • DGI News • DGI Updates • Earnings Releases
DGI Clipboard
“If you look for companies that can raise their dividends year after year without milking operations, you will automatically be lead to high quality stocks.”
- Edmund Faltermayer, Fortune magazine, October 1990
The All-Canadian DGI Portfolio Blueprint
Your Starting Point, Not Your Finish Line
Quality Companies. One Disciplined Strategy. Updated Quarterly.
What would a Canadian dividend growth portfolio look like if you were building one from scratch today?
That’s the question we answer every quarter with our All-Canadian DGI Portfolio Blueprint.
Building a successful dividend growth portfolio doesn’t have to be complicated. You don’t need to own dozens of stocks, predict where markets are headed, or constantly trade in and out of positions.
You need a carefully selected group of quality businesses, sensible valuations, disciplined position sizing, and a plan for putting your capital to work.
That’s exactly what our quarterly Blueprint provides.
The Blueprint: Put Your Capital to Work
One of the biggest challenges facing dividend growth investors is knowing where to begin. You have capital ready to invest, but which companies deserve a place in your portfolio, and how much should you allocate to each?
Our All-Canadian DGI Portfolio Blueprint takes much of the guesswork out of those initial decisions.
We’ve selected quality Canadian dividend growth companies that we believe can form the foundation of a long-term, income-producing portfolio. We evaluated each for business quality, dividend sustainability, and long-term growth potential.
But selecting the right companies is only half the equation.
How much you invest in each company matters just as much as which companies you own.
That’s why we go beyond providing a list of stocks. We assign each holding a target allocation based on its quality, current valuation, and role in the portfolio.
The result is a practical framework for putting meaningful capital to work right away, rather than waiting indefinitely for the perfect buying opportunity.
And because valuations change, so does our Blueprint.
Every quarter, we reassess the companies, revisit their allocations, and identify where we believe new capital offers the most attractive opportunities for long-term dividend growth.
Here’s What Our All-Canadian DGI Portfolio Looks Like Today
The following Blueprint illustrates a way to allocate new capital across 14 quality Canadian dividend growth companies based on current valuations. These target allocations reflect our current assessment and will be revisited each quarter.
Building on our previous article, Quality, Category and Sizing, the target allocations above illustrate how we would approach building a dividend growth portfolio in today’s market, based on our assessment of business quality, valuation and position sizing.
A starting allocation is not a permanent allocation. Some companies warrant larger positions because their current valuations offer more attractive opportunities. Others receive smaller allocations until their prices become more compelling. As valuations change, so does our approach to position sizing.
The Blueprint illustrates how we might initially deploy 51% of available capital, leaving the balance to take advantage of future opportunities. Our DGI Alerts provide ongoing insight into how and when we put additional capital to work in our own model portfolios.
This is not a prescribed portfolio or a set of recommended allocations. It is a practical illustration of our investment process, giving subscribers a framework they can adapt to their own objectives, circumstances and investment decisions.
We do the work. You stay in control.
The Blueprint Gets You Started. DGI Alerts Help You Keep Building.
Think of the Blueprint as your starting point, not your finished portfolio.
Once you’ve established that foundation, our DGI Alerts help you build on it as new opportunities emerge.
Whenever we add to an existing position or initiate a new holding in our MP Wealth-Builder Model Portfolio (CDN), paid subscribers receive a DGI Alert explaining what we’re buying, why we’re buying it, and how much capital we’re committing.
These alerts provide a practical way to gradually expand your portfolio, add to existing holdings when valuations become attractive, and introduce new companies as opportunities arise.
Over time, your portfolio can evolve to resemble our MP Wealth-Builder Model Portfolio (CDN), which we’ve been building and managing with real capital since May 2022, following the same disciplined business plan we share with our subscribers.
That’s the beauty of this approach.
You don’t need to build the perfect portfolio on day one. You need a quality foundation, a disciplined investment process, and the patience to let growing earnings and dividends do their work.
The Takeaway
A Blueprint for Every Stage of Your Investing Journey
New to dividend growth investing? Use the Blueprint as a practical starting point to build your own portfolio and put capital to work with confidence.
Already building your portfolio? Use our quarterly updates to challenge your allocations, spot opportunities, and decide where your next investment dollars should go.
Following our DGI Alerts? See how individual investment decisions can gradually transform a starting portfolio into a diversified collection of quality dividend growth businesses.
Our objective isn’t simply to show subscribers which stocks we own. It’s to share a disciplined, repeatable process they can use to build and manage their own portfolios.
The Blueprint helps you get started. DGI Alerts help you keep building. Our Wealth-Builder Model Portfolio shows you the process in action.
Quality determines what we own. Valuation influences when we buy. Position sizing determines how much we invest.
DGI Scorecard
MP Wealth-Builder Model Portfolio (Canada)
Annualized Total Return: +17.19% since inception
Total Return (includes dividends): +16.83 % year-to-date
Dividend Growth: 7.0% year-to-date
Growth Yield: 3.2%
(Inception May 1, 2022, to July 31, 2026. Returns are actual results of our model portfolio in CAD with dividends reinvested.)
This Week’s Highlights
The List (Canada)
Dividend Income Growth: +6.6% year-to-date
Capital Appreciation: +6.5% year-to-date
Dividend Announcements Last Week: None
Earnings Reports Last Week: Three
Earnings Reports This Week: Eleven
Top Performers from The List Last Week:
TC Energy Corp. (TRP-T), up +3.25%.
Enbridge Inc. (ENB-T), up +2.58%.
Canadian Natural Resources (CNQ-T), up +1.69%.
Worst Performer Last Week:
TFI International (TFII-N), down -17.05%.
Watchlists
The Magic Pants 2026 list (The List) includes 26 Canadian dividend-growth stocks, and our new American watchlist (The List-USA) includes 28 companies. Here are the criteria to be considered a candidate on our watchlists:
Dividend growth streak: 10 years or more.
Market cap: At least $1 billion.
Diversification: Limit of five companies per sector, preferably two per industry.
Cyclicality: Exclude REITs and pure-play energy companies due to high cyclicality.
Based on these criteria, we add or remove companies from The List annually on January 1. Prices and dividends are updated weekly.
The watchlists are not a portfolio but a coaching tool that helps us think about ideas and manage risk in our model portfolio. We own some, but not all, of the companies on these watchlists. In other words, we might want to buy these companies when valuation looks attractive.
Our newsletter provides readers with a comprehensive insight into the implementation and advantages of our dividend growth investing strategy. This evidence-based, unbiased approach has empowered DIY investors to outperform both actively managed dividend funds and passively managed indexes and dividend ETFs over longer-term horizons.
Each month, in the last week, I will share the updated watchlist for our American dividend growers (The List-USA). I will show the watchlist after the Canadian watchlist above.
New to Magic Pants?
Magic Pants Dividend Growth Investing is a behind-the-scenes look at how we build, maintain, and improve a dividend growth portfolio using real money, real positions, and real results.
Our objective is to grow dividend income by 7-10%+ annually while achieving long-term capital appreciation that matches or exceeds the broader market over a full investing cycle.
The name comes from a simple idea: when a quality company pays a dividend, cash moves from the company’s pocket to yours while your ownership stake remains intact. As earnings and dividends grow, the compounding cycle can accelerate. That’s the magic.
Build Your Own Growing Income Machine
Looking for a helping hand in the market? Paid members of Magic Pants Dividend Growth Investing get exclusive ideas and guidance to help them navigate changing market conditions.
The Magic Pants model portfolios (Canadian and American) are real-money, dividend-growth portfolios funded with actual capital and executed in live accounts. We own, size, and track every position in real time using our disciplined DGI process.
Become a paid subscriber and see exactly how we put the process into practice. You’ll also receive full access to this post and exclusive subscriber-only content.
We do the work. You stay in control.
From relevant news and quarterly earnings to the latest dividend announcements, we highlight what matters most and explain what it means for dividend growth investors.
