Don't settle for ordinary quarterly reports.

I take a look at three companies that beat market expectations every week, since I believe that it's the biggest factor in a stock beating the market. Leaving Wall Street's pros with stunned expressions can be a good thing. It usually means that 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 prognosticators over the past few trading days.

We can start with Ford (NYSE: F). The automaker posted a quarterly profit of $0.50 a share -- with a pre-tax operating profit of $0.46 a share. Analysts were parked at the $0.31 a share mark. Strong new car sales in recent months made this an easy beat to predict. Because new-car installations are so important for satellite radio, it also bodes well for Sirius XM Radio (Nasdaq: SIRI) which reports later this week. Perhaps even rep-scarred Toyota (NYSE: TM) will benefit when it reports next week.

UPS (NYSE: UPS) is also on the move. The parcel-delivery specialist may have seen its package volume, revenue, and operating profits slip from 2007 through 2009, but it's bouncing back now. UPS posted net income of $0.71 a share, ahead of both the $0.52 a share it earned a year ago and the $0.58 a share that Wall Street was targeting.

Finally, we have Akamai (Nasdaq: AKAM) landing ahead of the pros. The leading content-delivery network earned $0.35 a share in the first quarter. Analysts were settling for a profit of $0.31 a share. The company beat guesstimates, despite heated price competition between Akamai, Limelight Networks (Nasdaq: LLNW), and Level 3 (Nasdaq: LVLT) as their server farms jockey for the contracts of sites serving up gobs of bandwidth.

It's important to keep watching the companies that surpass expectations. Over time, it will be a rewarding experience for investors as the market rewards the overachievers. That's the kind of surprise that 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.