Business ups and downs

Global snack and beverage producer PepsiCo (NYSE: PEP) posted encouraging results for its fiscal-2009 third quarter. But despite sequential improvement, the company will need heavy investment to align its products with shifting consumer trends.

Sadly, there's no such thing as an ultimate buy signal when it comes to investing in stocks. Identifying companies with the wind at their back takes time, patience, and a good dose of due diligence.

Sadly, there's no such thing as an ultimate buy signal when it comes to investing in stocks. Identifying companies with the wind at their backs takes time, patience, and a good dose of due diligence.

In these dour economic times, Mr. Market seems to enjoy dogpiling on any stock that dares to fall short of analysts' estimates. To defy that trend, we're here to celebrate stocks that didn't merely meet Wall Street's predictions, but laughed in analysts' faces by leaving their miserly forecasts in the dust. The companies below have all soundly trounced earnings estimates by 20% or more in the last quarter:

At The Motley Fool, we poke plenty of fun at Wall Street analysts and their endless cycle of upgrades, downgrades, and "initiating coverage at neutral." So you might think we'd be the last people to give virtual ink to such "news." And we would be -- if that were all we were doing.

Graphics chip specialist NVIDIA (Nasdaq: NVDA) is going back to Graphics 101. Lawsuits are forcing the company to hit the emergency brakes on its development of system chipsets, so NVIDA's future hangs on the success of its graphics products again.

The big get bigger and the rich get richer. That's why McDonald's (NYSE: MCD) slogan "Billions and billions served" is so memorable -- you feel like you're part of a worldwide movement every time you have a Big Mac.

We can intentionally crash a probe on the moon, but can we unintentionally crash the market?

Sadly, there's no such thing as an ultimate buy signal when it comes to investing in stocks. Identifying companies with the wind at their back takes time, patience, and a good dose of due diligence.

Sadly, there's no such thing as an ultimate buy signal when it comes to investing in stocks. Identifying companies with the wind at their backs takes time, patience, and a good dose of due diligence.