The All-Canadian DGI Portfolio: You Weren't Too Late. Here's the Proof.
MP Market Review - July 28, 2026
Summary
This is not a stock-picking newsletter!
It’s a behind-the-scenes look at how a dividend growth portfolio is built, maintained, and improved over time.
Welcome to this week’s MP Market Review.
Before we begin, a quick explanation of the name.
Many years ago, when I first discovered dividend growth investing, I came across a quote that stopped me in my tracks:
“You have a pair of pants. In the left pocket, you have $100. You take $1 out of the left pocket and put it in the right pocket. You now have $101. There is no diminution of dollars in your left pocket. That is one magic pair of pants.”
That is dividend growth investing in its simplest form.
When a quality company pays a dividend, cash moves from the company’s pocket to yours, yet your ownership stake remains intact. As earnings grow, dividends tend to grow. As dividends grow, share prices often follow. Reinvest those dividends into additional shares, and the cycle accelerates: more shares generate more dividends, which buy even more shares.
That’s the magic.
It’s why we call this newsletter Magic Pants Dividend Growth Investing.
Every week, we track the companies on The List, our curated watchlist of Canadian dividend growth businesses selected for their ability to produce rising income over time. While we also publish a U.S. edition each month, Canada remains our primary hunting ground.
Our objective is straightforward:
Grow dividend income by 7-10%+ annually while achieving long-term capital appreciation that matches or exceeds the TSX Composite in Canada and the S&P 500 in the United States.
What follows is not theory.
It is the real-world application of a dividend growth strategy using real money, real positions, and real results.
Markets create an endless stream of noise. We ignore most of it.
Instead, we focus on a handful of metrics that tell us whether our process is working. No predictions. No forecasts. No crystal ball.
Just results.
The magic is in the dividend. Dividends lead. Prices follow.
This Week’s Scorecard
MP Wealth-Builder Model Portfolio (Canada)
Annualized Total Return: +17.64% since inception
Total Return (includes dividends): +17.71 % year-to-date
Current Yield: 3.2%
The List (Canada)
Dividend Income Growth: +6.6% year-to-date
Capital Appreciation: +9.3% year-to-date
Dividend Announcements Last Week: None
Earnings Reports Last Week: Two
Earnings Reports This Week: Nine
DGI Clipboard
“Forget timing the market. Build a portfolio that gives you a raise every year.”
The All-Canadian DGI Portfolio: You Weren’t Too Late. Here’s the Proof.
How good are you at timing the market? With a disciplined dividend growth investing strategy, you don’t have to be.
Last December 19, I published an article titled “You’re Not Late to the Party. Dividend Growth Is Still Delivering Gifts.”
At the time, one question kept coming up from new subscribers who were considering investing alongside our paid model portfolios:
“Did I miss my chance?”
My answer was simple.
No.
Markets will always fluctuate, but waiting for the “perfect” entry point often means never getting started.
Instead, I recommended a disciplined strategy that balanced immediate investment with dry powder available for future opportunities.
The Strategy
For an investor with $100,000 ready to invest, the concept was straightforward.
Invest approximately 50% of your capital immediately using our All-Canadian Dividend Growth Portfolio, which is available free to all subscribers.
Then, gradually deploy the remaining capital by following our DGI Alerts (paid subscribers), adding to existing positions or initiating new ones only when high-quality dividend growth companies became sensibly priced.
This approach removes the pressure of trying to time the market while allowing valuation to guide future purchases.
Six Months Later...
More than six months have now passed.
The obvious question is:
Did the strategy work?
Let’s look at the results.
Where We Started
On December 19, 2025, we invested $52,000, representing 52% of the available capital, based on our recommended position sizes at the time.
Since then, our DGI Alerts have guided investors to:
Add to existing holdings.
Initiate three new positions:
Canadian Natural Resources (CNQ)
Stantec (STN)
Brookfield Infrastructure Partners (BIP.UN)
Each purchase was made only when valuation justified allocating fresh capital.
The Results
Today, approximately 60% of the original capital has been deployed.
Here’s what that disciplined approach has accomplished:
✅ Built a portfolio of 16 high-quality dividend growth companies
✅ Created a growing stream of dividend income that continues to compound
✅ Preserved approximately 40% of the original capital for future opportunities
✅ Generated total returns that closely mirror the approximately 18% annualized performance of our MP Wealth-Builder Model Portfolio (CDN)
Takeaway
The biggest mistake many investors make isn’t buying at the wrong time.
It’s waiting for a perfect opportunity that rarely arrives.
A disciplined, phased investment strategy allows you to begin compounding immediately while maintaining the flexibility to take advantage of future market weakness.
Six months later, the results suggest that investors who followed this approach weren’t late to the party at all.
They simply chose a disciplined way to join it.
Looking for a helping hand in the market? Members of Magic Pants Dividend Growth Investing get exclusive ideas and guidance to navigate any climate.
The Magic Pants model portfolios (Canadian and American) are real-money, dividend-growth portfolios funded with actual capital and executed in live accounts. Every position shown is owned, sized, and tracked in real time using our disciplined DGI process.
Become a PAID subscriber, and I’ll show you exactly how I do it. In addition, gain full access to this post and exclusive, subscriber-only content. We do the work; you stay in control!
DGI Scorecard
The Magic Pants 2026 list (The List) includes 26 Canadian dividend growth stocks, and our new American watchlist (The List-USA) contains 28 companies. Here are the criteria to be considered a candidate on our watchlists:
Dividend growth streak: 10 years or more.
Market cap: Minimum one billion dollars.
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, companies are added or removed from ‘The List’ annually on January 1. Prices and dividends are updated weekly.
‘The List’ is not a portfolio but a coaching tool that helps us think about ideas and risk manage our model portfolio. We own some but not all the companies on ‘The List’. 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 empowers DIY investors to outperform both actively managed dividend funds and passively managed indexes and dividend ETFs over longer-term horizons.
Note: In the last week of every month, I will show the updated watchlist for our American dividend growers, The List-USA. It will be shown after the Canadian watchlist below.
Performance of 'The List'
The dividend growth for The List remained unchanged last week, with an average YTD increase of 6.6% (income).
The price of The List was down slightly last week and now stands at +9.3% YTD (capital).
Top Performers Last Week:
Franco Nevada (FNV-N), up +6.93%.
Canadian Natural Resources (CNQ-T), up +6.61%.
Brookfield Infrastructure Partners (BIP-N), up +4.13%.
Worst Performer Last Week:
Thomson Reuters (TRI-Q), down -6.29%.
From breaking news to quarterly earnings reports, we break down the week’s biggest headlines to help you make sense of the market.
