Earnings season: These stocks may beat the Street

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters

As the third-quarter earnings season unfolds, analysts on Wall Street have come out in favor of a group of stocks they believe will outperform during this always volatile time.

In the next two weeks, more than 25 percent of S&P 500 components will release quarterly figures, setting up a potential opportunity for traders to benefit from a post-earnings surge.

While betting on stocks ahead of earnings is often a difficult trade, investors tend to look at the pace of analysts' upward or downward revisions in order to find the names that could be ready to pop or drop.

The idea is that those who track companies for a living and put their reputation on the line for the most accurate estimate may have a strong sense of what's about to come. When they are raising their estimates into the release date, it should mean that a company's business is trending better than what many others expect.

With data from Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S, CNBC Pro searched for the companies with the most upside and downside revisions ahead of earnings.