It doesn’t “persistently” deliver higher returns. It has periods of under-performance and periods of over-performance. There are some companies that out-deliver in execution and others that under-deliver – and then times where those two lists switch places. The madness of the crowds might have times where it over-does expectations in this category of investment but that is less definable than you may think since the universe of dividend growth contains a wide array of investment categories. No proposition of mine for dividend growth investing comes down to “it will persistently outperform others.” The proposition is, actually, counter to that whole mentality. I am not interested in what others will do or think (markets – your question). I care about what the companies are doing, and that is the underlying argument for dividend growth investing – removing the investment thesis from exogenous factors to endogenous ones.