Dividends can produce as much as a third of your total return over long periods, and you can even retire on dividends.
There are 4 key stock dividend dates that are involved with dividend payments:
1- The Declaration Date is several weeks in advance of a dividend payment—it’s when company’s board of directors sets the amount and timing of the proposed payment.
2- The Payable Date is the date set by the board on which the dividend will actually be paid out to shareholders.
3- The Record Date is for shareholders who hold the stock before the payable date and receive the dividend payment. That date is set any number of weeks before the payable date.
4-The Ex-Dividend Date is two business days before the record date and it’s when the shares begin to trade without their dividend. If you buy stocks one day or more before their ex-dividend date, you will still get the dividend. That’s when a stock is said to trade cum-dividend. If you buy on the ex-dividend date or later, you won’t get the dividend. The ex-dividend date is in place to allow pending stock trades to settle.
We think very highly of stocks that have been paying dividends for five or more years, at TSI Network. Many of these stocks fit in well with our three-part Successful Investor philosophy:
1- Invest mainly in well-established companies;
2- Spread your money out across most if not all of the five main economic sectors (Manufacturing & Industry; Resources & Commodities; Consumer; Finance; and Utilities);
3- Downplay or avoid stocks in the broker/media limelight.
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The company has raised its dividend each year since it became a public company in 1995. The latest increase came with the March 2026 payment when CN raised your quarterly dividend by 3.1%, to $0.915 a share from $0.8875. The new annual rate of $3.66 yields 2.4%.
Great West raised your quarterly dividend by 9.8% with the March 2026 payment, to $0.67 a share from $0.61. The new annual rate of $2.68 yields a high 3.8%.
The ETF hold 96 stocks. Its top 10 holdings include South Bow Corp., 2.9%; Telus, 2.9%; Westshore Terminals, 2.5%; Gibson Energy, 2.5%; Enbridge, 2.2%; CR REIT, 2.1%; Canadian Natural Resources, 2.0%; Mullen Group, 2.0%; and Pembina Pipeline, 2.0%.
Energy stocks account for 20% of the fund’s assets, while Financials (17%), Industrials (14%), Utilities (10%), and Real Estate (9%), are other key segments.
The company continues to add promising new projects. You can expect that to keep your dividend rising for many years to come.
DREAM OFFICE REIT, $17.33, is a now a sell. The REIT (Toronto symbol D.UN; TSINetwork Rating: Extra Risk) (www.dream.ca/office; Units o/s: 16.4 million; Market cap: $283.7 million; Dividend yield: 5.8%) owns 26 office properties.
The REIT continues to convert its properties to grocery-anchored malls, which encourages repeat traffic. In the past two years, it has added grocery stores to 10 of its properties.
Beyond dependable income, shareholders should benefit from Fortis’s ongoing investment in generation facilities and transmission infrastructure. These upgrades will help it meet rising electricity demand from new datacentres across Canada and the U.S. Datacentres often require 5 to 30 times more electricity to answer an internet search question with artificial intelligence than to answer it without AI.