The Globe and Mail attempts to identify companies that have exceeded analyst expectations, while keeping in mind their historical volatility, in its Thursday, March 16, edition. The Globe's Ian Tam writes in the Number Cruncher column that to achieve this, he created a strategy that ranks stocks on two factors: latest earnings surprise (this is the latest reported EPS figure from the company), compared against the consensus estimate from the Street just prior to the company's report; five-year historic beta (beta measures the historic sensitivity of the stock's price movement relative to the S&P/TSX composite index. A company with a beta less than one has historically moved less than the benchmark in trending markets, and in this case, is preferred for reduced portfolio volatility). To qualify, companies must have at least active analysts covering the stock, and a market cap of at least $850-million. This figure represents the top third of stocks by market cap in the CPMS database today, which consists of 720 companies. Stocks that have surprised analysts are Sierra Wireless, Fortis, Intertape Polymer Group, Dominion Diamond and Canadian Utilities.