MP Market Review – April 10, 2026
Last updated by BM on April 14, 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. Each week, we track the Canadian dividend growth companies on The List, our curated watchlist of businesses designed to produce rising income. While we also publish a U.S. edition monthly, Canada remains our training ground.
Our objective is simple: grow dividend income by 7–10%+ annually while delivering capital appreciation that matches or exceeds the TSX Composite in Canada and the S&P 500 for our U.S. investors over a full market cycle.
What you’re about to read isn’t theory. It’s the real-time application of a dividend growth strategy using real money, with a clear objective: growing income first and letting capital growth follow.
Markets generate a lot of noise. We ignore most of it.
Instead, we track a small set of metrics that tell us whether our dividend growth strategy is working in real time. No forecasts. No opinions. Just results.
Here they are:
- Dividend income from The List: +6.4% year-to-date
- Capital value: +1.7% year-to-date
- Dividend announcements last week: None
- Earnings reports last week: None
- Earnings reports this week: None
DGI Clipboard
“Current yield, using its own historic yield as a guide, is, in my view, a fine valuation measure.”
— Tom Connolly
Timely Ten: High Quality on Sale… If You’re Paying Attention
Our Timely Ten lists remain the fastest way to spot potential value opportunities, which explains why they continue to be the most-read articles every month.
Timely Ten – Canada
Very little changed in this month’s Timely Ten (CDN).
Just one name moved on, and one moved off. When that happens, new ideas don’t jump off the page. You have to look a little harder. That is where the opportunity usually is.
One name that quietly stood out this month is Waste Connections.
The stock moved from number six to number four on the list, driven by recent price weakness. That matters.
Outside of Canadian National Railway, Waste Connections has one of the highest quality rankings in the Timely Ten. That alone should get your attention.
This is the playbook.
We are not chasing headlines. We are not guessing direction. We are simply waiting for high-quality businesses to come back to sensible prices and then acting accordingly.
From a portfolio standpoint, this is where things get interesting.
We already have close to a full position in Canadian National. Waste Connections, on the other hand, sits at roughly 3.5%. Not quite at its 5% maximum. That leaves room.
And when a business of this quality starts moving up the list due to price weakness, we pay attention.
That is how the income snowball gets built.
Note: goeasy Ltd.’s dividend has been suspended.
Timely Ten – United States
Very little changed in this month’s Timely Ten (USA).
No names moved on or off the list. But that does not mean nothing happened.
Several high-quality businesses quietly got cheaper. Comcast, Automatic Data Processing, Intuit, and Essential Utilities all moved in the right direction from a valuation standpoint.
That is where you lean in.
One other name that continues to stand out is Visa.
Visa carries one of the highest quality rankings on our U.S. watchlist and has been a standout dividend growth performer for nearly two decades. This is exactly the type of business we want compounding in the background for years.
From a portfolio standpoint, we are already at a full position size, so adding here is unlikely.
But for new capital or new investors, this is one to study closely.
High-quality businesses rarely go on sale.
When they do, you pay attention.
Background
Step three in our process involves regularly monitoring our quality dividend growers, which can become quite challenging depending on the number of companies we track. Fortunately, we rely on ‘The List’ rather than the index’s vast array of stocks, which streamlines our task. Nevertheless, we continually seek methods to enhance our efficiency. Through dividend yield theory, we’ve discovered an approach that has proven remarkably effective in supporting our efforts over the years.
Dividend yield theory is a simple and intuitive approach to valuing dividend growth stocks. It suggests that the dividend yield of quality dividend growth stocks tends to revert to the mean over time, assuming that the underlying business model remains stable. In practical terms, if a stock pays a dividend yield above its ten-year average annual yield, its price will likely increase to return the yield to its historical average. Given that price and yield move in opposite directions, this theory helps us identify stocks poised for a favourable price correction.
We have pre-screened our candidates using the criteria we initially laid out in building our watchlists. This helps us considerably narrow the universe of investable stocks.
- 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.
Next, we rank our Canadian and American watchlists based on how far each stock’s price is below its fair value (Low Price), as determined by dividend yield theory. To find fair value, divide the current dividend (Dividend) by the stock’s historical high yield (High Yield).
Since price and yield move in opposite directions, a lower price results in a higher yield, and vice versa. The ten companies above the thick black line have a current price (Price) below fair value (Low Price). Put simply, these stocks have a current dividend yield higher than their historically high yield. According to dividend yield theory, these companies are sensibly priced and have the highest probability of a price increase in the short term. These are our Timely Ten.
Takeaway
History shows the Timely Ten is fertile ground for finding attractive entry points into high-quality dividend growers. Whether or not you act on the names, the list serves its purpose: to surface opportunities when quality meets value.
When making investment decisions, always prioritize a company’s ‘quality’ over a ‘sensible price’. For more details on our quality indicators, download our Free Guide to Finding Quality Dividend Growth Stocks here.
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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.
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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 Canadian 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.
Performance of ‘The List’
The dividend growth of The List stayed the same last week, with an average YTD increase of 6.4% (income).
The price of The List was up last week and now stands at +1.7% YTD (capital).
Top Performers Last Week:
- TFI International (TFII-N), up +9.96%.
- Toromont Industries (TIH-T), up +7.78%.
- TD Bank (TD-T), up +5.11%.
Worst Performer Last Week:
- goeasy Ltd. (GSY-T), down -10.04%.
Note: Stocks ending in “-N or -Q” declare earnings and dividends in US dollars. To achieve currency consistency between dividends and share price for these stocks, we have shown dividends in US dollars and share price in US dollars (these stocks are listed on a US exchange). The dividends for their Canadian counterparts (-T) would be converted into CDN dollars and would fluctuate with the exchange rate.
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