3 Stocks That Blew the Market Away

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 pros over the past few trading days.

We can start with Toll Brothers (NYS: TOL) .

The upscale homebuilder checked in with a quarterly profit of $0.36 a share, more than twice as much as analysts were forecasting.

Single-family housing starts are up 22% so far this year, and developers are naturally cashing in on improvement. D.R. Horton (NYS: DHI) and Pulte (NYS: PHM) also blew past Wall Street guesstimates earlier this summer. Things can always change if the economy retreats or mortgage rates advance, but the climate's looking pretty good for Toll and its foundation-building peers.

Barnes & Noble (NYS: BKS) also came out ahead last week.

The bookseller posted a narrower deficit than analysts were expecting, fueled by the runaway success of Fifty Shades of Grey. The erotic novel helped keep the superstore chain's loss at $0.78 a share. That may not seem so encouraging, but the pros were banking on a deficit of $0.98 a share.

Finally we have salesforce.com (NYS: CRM) closing the sale. The Web-based provider of enterprise software solutions was supposed to see its quarterly profit climb 30% to $0.39 a share. Instead the company came through with a 40% burst to $0.42 a share. The market darling has now blasted past Wall Street's estimates every quarter over the past year.

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 that we look for in the Rule Breakers newsletter service. Want in? Check out 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.

Either way, come back next week to learn about more stocks that blew the market away in the coming days.

The article 3 Stocks That Blew the Market Away originally appeared on Fool.com.

The Motley Fool owns shares of salesforce.com.Motley Fool newsletter serviceshave recommended buying shares of salesforce.com. A separate newsletter service has recommended shorting salesforce.com.Motley Fool newsletter serviceshave recommended writing puts on Barnes & Noble. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe thatconsidering a diverse range of insightsmakes us better investors. Try any of our Foolish newsletter servicesfree for 30 days.Longtime Fool contributorRick Munarrizcalls them as he sees them. He does not own shares in any of the stocks in this story. Rick is also part of theRule Breakersnewsletter research team, seeking out tomorrow's ultimate growth stocks a day early.

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