Don't settle for ordinary quarterly reports.

I take a look at three companies that beat market expectations every week, since I believe that's the biggest factor in whether a stock beats the market. Leaving Wall Street's pros with stunned expressions can be a good thing. It usually means the companies have more in the tank than analysts figured. Capital appreciation typically follows.

Let's take a look at a few companies that humbled the pros over the past few trading days.

We can start with salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM). The poster child for enterprise cloud computing posted an adjusted quarterly profit of $0.37 a share to close out the week higher. Most of its peers tanked in a week that saw the Nasdaq Composite surrender 5.3% of its value.  Analysts were only banking on a profit of $0.34 a share.

Netlist (Nasdaq: NLST) was another tech stock that bucked the trend to gain ground last week. The maker of memory subsystems for server and storage applications posted a narrower loss than Wall Street was expecting.

Netlist's deficit of $0.02 a share -- while still a loss -- was better than the $0.05 per share in red ink the pros were targeting. Pair that up with a 16% spike in revenue, and Netlist closed out last week with a 5% gain.

Finally, we have Foot Locker (NYSE: FL) outrunning the prognosticators. The athletic-footwear retailer turned a surprising 9.7% spike in same-store sales into a quarterly profit of $0.83 a share, blowing past the $0.60 a share it earned last year and the $0.74 a share analysts were forecasting.

It was a good week for sporty retailers, as sporting goods specialists Hibbett Sports (Nasdaq: HIBB) and Dick's Sporting Goods (NYSE: DKS) also landed well ahead of Wall Street.

Moving in the right direction
It's important to keep watching the companies that surpass expectations. Over time, it will be a lucrative 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? Try a 30-day trial subscription. If that's not up your alley just yet, you can still check out a free special report detailing the next trillion-dollar revolution.

In any case, come back next week to learn about more stocks that blew the market away.

If these three victors aren't enough, check out a new report that reveals three hidden winners in a booming niche that will only get bigger in the future. It's a free report, so check it out soon.