Why settle for ordinary quarterly reports?

I believe that the biggest factor in a stock's ability to beat the market is to beat the market's expectations. That's why I look every week at three companies that have humbled Wall Street's pros over the past few trading days. If a company has more in the tank than the analysts figured, capital appreciation often follows.

We can start with salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM). The enterprise-software provider with a cloud-computing bent saw earnings more than double to $0.17 a share. Analysts were expecting a profit of just $0.15 a share. Moving enterprise solutions to a Web-stored platform is cheaper than conventional offerings, and that's why Salesforce is growing during a corporate slowdown.

Target (NYSE:TGT) earned $0.79 a share in its latest quarter, well ahead of the $0.66 that Mr. Market was banking on. The report comes a week after larger rival Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) also beat the pros.

Sympathy plays don't always work out. For instance, Home Depot (NYSE:HD) delivered better-than-expected results on Tuesday, when it announced a quarterly profit of $0.64 a share, just ahead of the market's $0.59 profit target. Sexier rival Lowe's (NYSE:LOW) stepped up a day earlier, though, and fell short. So we can't make a blanket statement about home-improvement chains for the quarter.

Keep watching the companies that surpass expectations. Over time, doing so 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.