Every week, I take a look at a few companies that lapped their profit targets. Leaving Wall Street's pros with quizzical looks on their faces can be a good thing. It usually means that the companies have more in the tank than analysts figured, and capital appreciation often follows.

Let's take a look at a few companies that humbled the prognosticators this past week.

We can start with E*TRADE (Nasdaq: ETFC). The discount broker posted quarterly earnings of $0.12 a share. It may not seem like much, but Wall Street was actually braced for yet another deficit. It's the first quarterly profit that E*TRADE has put out in three years.

A good tip-off was that rivals TD AMERITRADE (Nasdaq: AMTD) and Charles Schwab (Nasdaq: SCHW) had also come through with better-than-projected results in the days leading up to E*TRADE's report.

Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) also landed ahead of the pros. Net income soared 48% during the world's largest software company's fiscal fourth quarter. Earnings of $0.51 a share blew past analyst targets of $0.46 a share. Investors also could have gotten an early read here before Mr. Softy's victory lap, as computer chip giants Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) and AMD (NYSE: AMD) had blown past bottom-line estimates a week earlier.  

And finally, we have Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) outrunning Wall Street the way it seems to do every three months. Apple's latest blowout quarter treated shareholders to net income of $3.51 a share, 75% ahead of where it was a year ago and four dimes richer than the analysts camping out at the $3.11-a-share mark.

So keep watching the companies that exceed expectations. Over time, it will be a rewarding experience for investors as the market rewards the overachievers. That's the kind of surprise we look for in the Rule Breakers newsletter service. Want in? Check out a 30-day trial subscription.

Either way, come back next Monday to learn about more stocks that blew the market away.