Total Returns Are the Scoreboard. Dividends Are the Game Plan.
MP Market Review - November 28, 2025
Summary
Welcome to this week’s MP Market Review – your go-to source for insights and updates on the Canadian dividend growth companies we track on The List! While we’ve expanded our watchlists to include U.S. companies, The List-USA, our Canadian lineup remains the cornerstone of our coaching approach.
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Your journey to dividend growth mastery starts here – let’s dive in!
Last week, dividend growth of The List was up with an average return of +7.2% YTD (income).
Last week, the price of The List was up from the previous week with an average return of +13.1% YTD (capital).
Last week, one company on The List made a dividend announcement.
Last week, one company on The List released an earnings report.
This week, two companies from The List will report their earnings.
DGI Clipboard
“I measure our progress primarily on the basis of the income we are collecting and the growth of that income through dividend increases.”
- Josh Peters, The Ultimate Dividend Playbook
Total Returns Are the Scoreboard. Dividends Are the Game Plan.
Intro
I recently published the quarterly performance summaries for both of our model portfolios. Each one continues to do exactly what it was built to do: produce a steadily rising stream of dividends from high-quality businesses.
If you zoom out to our secondary objective of delivering above-average total returns over a full investment cycle, you might wonder whether we are meeting expectations, particularly when stacked beside the recent surge in AI-driven U.S. indexes. Since its inception, the Canadian portfolio has compounded at 12.29 percent annually and the American portfolio at 8.6 percent. They are 3.5 and 2.5 years old, respectively. These returns are solid, comfortably ahead of fixed-income options like high-interest savings accounts or GICs and CDs, yet they may look modest next to the short-term equity market heat.
This is where one of the core lessons of dividend growth investing shows its worth. As long as our income keeps rising and our capital base sits well above our original investment, patience is the essential ingredient. Our process is designed to drive long-term income expansion and capital appreciation. Time, not tinkering, does most of the work.
Takeaway
If staying patient feels difficult, borrow a page from Josh Peters and shift your focus to the income itself, the cash arriving in your account, and the pace at which it grows through dividend increases. Watching those payments climb month after month, regardless of market noise, completely reshaped how I think about investing and how real wealth is created.
Stay the course. Your future self will thank you.
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DGI Scorecard
The List (2025)
The Magic Pants 2025 list includes 29 Canadian dividend growth stocks. Here are the criteria to be considered a candidate on The List:
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'
Last week, dividend growth was up, with an average return of +7.2% YTD (income).
The price of ‘The List’ was up from the previous week, with an average YTD return of +13.1% (capital).
Last week’s best performers on ‘The List’ were goeasy Ltd. (GSY-T), up +12.51%.; Franco Nevada (FNV-N), up +9.69%; and Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc. (ATD-T) up +5.98%.
Telus (T-T) was the worst performer last week, down -1.98%.
From breaking news to quarterly earnings reports, we break down the week’s biggest headlines to help you make sense of the market. The full newsletter has even more insights and analysis, don’t miss out!
