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 Google (Nasdaq: GOOG).

The world's leading search engine surprised investors by posting an adjusted profit of $8.74 a share. Analysts apparently had the right numbers but in the wrong order, with their $7.84 consensus estimate.

Google's strength was enough to send regional search leaders higher on Friday. Shares of China's Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU) and Russia's Yandex (Nasdaq: YNDX) rose 4% and 2%, respectively, on the news.

Yum! Brands (NYSE: YUM) earned a charge-adjusted $0.66 a share in its second quarter, ahead of both the $0.61 a share that the pros were targeting and the $0.58 a share it rang up a year earlier. The parent company of KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell is a big winner in China, where comps rose a mindboggling 18%. It's a different story closer to home, as same-unit sales and operating profits fell in the United States. Yum!'s Chinese resiliency in Wednesday night's report was enough to send China's Country Style Cooking (NYSE: CCSC) up nearly 9% over the course of the final two trading days of last week.

Stronger investment-banking revenue and a welcome dip in loan-loss reserves helped guide Citigroup (NYSE: C) to a quarterly profit of $1.09 a share. Wall Street had been banking on net income of $0.96 a share. The stock still took a hit after Citi provided uninspiring guidance, so it remains to be seen if the banking giant's report was a good or bad omen for Bank of America's (NYSE: BAC) report tomorrow.

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 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.