The beat the TSX portfolio (hypothetical ticker BTSX) has a wonderful longer term habit of beating the market. The strategy is dead simple. BTSX will simply hold the top ten yielding stocks from the TSX 60. It will change the constituents (holdings) for the first trading day of each year, and it will continue to hold those ten stocks throughout the year. The beat the TSX portfolio underperformed in the pandemic year of 2020 as value was certainly out of favour. But it is charging back. The BTSX portfolio is back to its winning ways in 2021 and 2022.
Here is the dedicated site for the beat the TXS portfolio – dividendstrategy.ca. The simple strategy has a long-term history of outperforming the market, to a very meaningful degree.
The Beat The TSX Portfolio for 2022
With 5 energy companies in the mix, the portfolio is (obviously) well positioned in 2022 due to the spike in oil and natural gas prices. Pipelines are also taking advantage of the energy trends.

- The BTSX portfolio has delivered 12.45% in 2022, to the end of March.
- The TSX Composite is up 4.0%.
BTSX delivered 5.1% in January and then tacked on another 2.6% in February, and 4.7% in March.
The returns of individual assets


There is only one loser in the group. It is not surprising that the energy producer (Suncor) is the top performer. That said, Suncor has underperformed the energy index (XEG) by about 7% in 2022.
The standard deviation represents the volatility of a stock. A higher number points to a higher level of volatility.
The individual holdings 2021
Here are the holdings, from dividendstrategy.ca. This also includes the starting yield for 2021.

On this link you find this article on the beat the TXS BTSX portfolio. That post offered the portfolio for 2019 and the 2020 BTSX portfolio. You’ll see there is not a lot of turnover, there are only two replacements for 2021 from 2020. There was only one replacement in 2020 from 2019.
For the record if I was holding or following the BTSX approach, I would keep the past holdings and simply add any new holdings each year.
Also, I am happy to see Canadian energy producer Canadian Natural Resources (CNQ) make it into the portfolio. In October I had suggested that readers take a look at the value in Canadian energy stocks. That suggestion was about 300% ago, ha.
The record of BTXS outperformance.

We see significant and consistent outperformance over the 10-year, 20-year and 30-year time frames. It is not difficult to build a successful stock portfolio. If you approach an advisor or planner and they suggest that you should sell all of your successful Canadian big dividend payers – run away. Those Canadian dividend stocks can be incorporated into a sensible balanced portfolio. You might build around a BTSX or Canadian High Dividend approach.
In 2020 the BTSX portfolio underperformed considerably. That underperformance trend was duly noted when we checked in on the Canadian dividend ETFs in 2020. Value stocks were out of favour during the pandemic. Though we’ve seen a reversal towards value at the end of 2020 and into 2021. Earning and dividends are back. Year to date a high dividend approach such as Vanguard’s VDY has almost doubled up on the returns of the market.
The 2021 returns for BTSX

Yes, the beat is back. For 2021 to end of April.
- BTSX 22.61%
- TSX Composite 10.72%
And let’s have a look at the individual holdings.

Eight of the holdings kept the beat.
When I wrote on the Beat The TSX portfolio in December of 2020, I had suggested that there was greater value in the high dividend strategy from that point in time.
From that Cut The Crap Investing post …
The BTSX portfolio is down by 10% in 2020 while the TSX 60 is up by 6.8% to the end of last week. That is a significant underperformance. This is when patience will/may pay off for those that embrace the BTSX approach. If history repeats, there is even more value today in that high yield mix; so says that drastic underperformance in 2020.
Why does it work?
The BTSX finds successful and profitable companies that pay out large dividends. The TSX 60 screen adds a “bluer chip” layer. And certainly do not discount the value of the generous and mostly growing dividends. That is more than important. And the strategy of selecting the TSX constituents with the greatest dividends is a classic value play. It finds some of the most beat up companies in the index. As the stock prices go down, up goes the current dividend yield. You are often buying much greater current earnings (compared to the market) to go along with the greater dividends.
The approach also finds solid sectors with wide moats – financials, telcos, utilities and pipelines at the core.
The 2021 first half update.
You’ll find the first 6 months update post on dividendstrategy.ca.
The outperformance continues …

The Beat The TSX Portfolio maintained its lead over the TSX Composite through the third quarter .

And here’s the returns comparison to the end of November 2021. I just had to look. The rates of return have increased slightly for the BTSX and the TSX.

Holdings performance to the end of November 2021.

We can see that Canadian Natural Resources, Power Corp and Shaw have been the main driver of that market beat. I was happy to see Canadian Natural Resources find its way into the BTSX. It has been well over a year that I suggested we take a look at investing in Canadian oil and gas stocks.
The final beat in 2021
Here’s the returns for the individual assets.
- Pembina 36.1%
- Enbridge 30.0%
- TC Energy 20.3%
- Bell 27.9%
- Power Corp 49.9%
- CNQ 82.6%
- CIBC 41.5%
- Shaw 78.4%
- Scotiabank 38.0%
- Emera 22.3%
Average of 42.7%
For 2021 the TSX 60 delivered 27.9%.
The TSX Composite returned 25.1%
Outperformance for BTSX of 14.8% of the TSX 60.
We continue to see that the TSX 60 is superior to the TSX Composite. For couch potato portfolios I suggest the TSX 60 (XIU) on the Canadian ETF portfolio page.
Here’s the wonderful year-end update post on dividendstrategy.ca.
Longer term outperformance
And even more impressive, here’s what happens when you outperform over time. An average of 2% to 2.5% annual outperformance can ‘add up’ to a tremendous advantage in portfolio value. Of course, that’s life changing.
As always, past performance does not guarantee future market crushing. 🙂

We can’t argue with success.
It’s a viable investment idea that you might use or build around. For more Canadian growth you might bolt on the Canadian tech sector. You might layer in other types of stocks such as the Canadian retail stocks.
And of course always consider the total portfolio mix and risk level. Geographic diversification is important. Know the tax considerations. And ensure the investment portfolio and approach is part of a greater life and financial plan.
The self-directed investor can check in with a fee for service planner. You’ll find the planning basics and checklist in that post. And this might also be a good time to read my personal finance book. Ok it’s a blog post. I only needed 1000 words.
Thanks for reading. We’ll see you in the comment section. You got the beat?
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Already own 6 of the 10!
Great portfolio strategy. And it beat the TSX by quite a wide margin. 🙂 The dividend yield alone already more than satisfy the 4% safe withdrawal rate. I own 5 on that list. Maybe I should consider buying the others as well, lol. I wonder if you could do this with U.S. stocks to try and beat the S&P 500 index.
Jeremy Siegel did a study on dividend equities that would outperform the S&P 500. One was called the S&P 10 and the other the S&P Core 10. That was in the early 2000’s though. Seems a long time ago now.
Thank you Dale for this great article ! i do have 7 out of those 10. but my question is regarding Enbridge what do you think the effect of possibly shutting down line 5 on the company ?
Thanks
Thanks Dale for covering BTSX for quite some time. Am thinking to follow this one this year on Jan 1st. I have read some articles about it that there can be issues in performance if the investor miss the date or buy after or before few days?
How long you have been following this strategy and how much of your portfolio is dedicated in following this strategy. This all seems like a no brainer to me considering 6 to 7% avg XIU returns + lower div yield.
Thanks for stopping buy. It would not be a big deal at all to miss out on the Jan 1 start date. If you like the idea you’d be at this for quite some time. I’ve held my 7 big Canadian dividend payers for quite some time. That said, I was weaving in and out of more pure indexing vs individual stock holding, so some of the stocks were sold and bought again.
Based on comparisons I eventually moved to an all-stock portfolio for myself for Canadian holdings.
I did not want to expose my wife to the concentration risk, so she is invested in Vanguards’ VDY and iShares XIU for Canadian holdings. We both have stock portfolios for U.S. assets. Other ETFs and bonds round it out.
Dale
Hi Dale. Great article. What are your thoughts on XTR as a more conservative variation of XIU? Similar stock holdings but XTR also hold short-term bonds to mitigate against market volatility.
Try this one starting this year in my TFSA I bought on Jan 5th keeping fingers crossed. Thanks for covering the BTSX every year.
Please do an article on CDR shares of US Companies such as Costco / Apple etc. are they worth buying through Wealthsimple my only concern is about their volume at the moment.
excellent article as usual, just curious about CDR/NEO:
question re CDR on neo exchange, does your wife own BRK on neo exchange?
has BKR ever paid a dividend? Checked yahoo finance and NBDB, presently no div payout on BRK.
will US stocks owned on NEO pay dividends if the parent US company pays a dividend?
if so, in US or CDN dollars?
Hi Michael, we own BRK.B directly. And fortunately, Mr. Buffett does not pay out a dividend. He reinvests those income. And the Berkshire portfolio is flush with income and some leverage. I figure the world’s greatest investor might be a little better at all of this, compared to me and my wife 🙂
Berkshire is certainly tax efficient for many. No income. When you want income, you sell shares to make a homemade dividend.
Dale
Hi Dale,
Always looking forward to your weekend reads. I think I know the answer but is there an ETF out there that is BTSX or is the closet TSX 60 like XIU?
Thank you.
Hi Lawrence, there is no actual ETF, you would have to buy the individual holdings. The best play in the Canadian High Yield space is Vanguard VDY IMHO. That said iShares XEI is looking very interesting thanks to the additional energy producer exposure.
Dale