The Globe and Mail reports in its Friday edition King Dividend's rule over the stock markets is being challenged. The Globe's Rob Carrick writes investors are in a more speculative mood this year, and that means dividend-paying stocks have slipped down the performance charts. The top three sectors in the first quarter of the year were materials, energy and gold. Even the TSX Venture Exchange has come to life. Mr. Carrick figures we may be at an inflection point where the dividend stars of the past five years give way to companies that offer more growth potential. While the U.S. economy seems to be improving, there remains concern resource-hungry China may be slowing. Still, the S&P/TSX capped materials and energy indexes have each gained about 9 per cent this year. Only the global gold index, up 16 per cent, has topped them. The resource-heavy TSX-V index, down 56 per cent over the past three years, has jumped 7.4 per cent this year. Some of the weakest performers of the year to date are in dividend-rich sectors like financials, telecom services and REITs. Clearly, the composite has some catching up to do. Mr. Carrick advises dividend investors to simply buy an ETF tracking the composite index.