No such thing as bad news for tech investors (this week)

SAN FRANCISCO— On Friday, all news was good news for investors in big-cap technology companies.

Google (GOOG) reported first-quarter revenue and profit that fell short of Wall Street expectations, yet the stock rose as much as 5%.

Wall Street shrugged off the miss because, as BGC Financial stock analyst Colin Gillis said, "the first quarter results could have been much worse."

For Microsoft (MSFT), the story was similar, if not the same.

Microsoft handily topped Wall Street's sales and profit estimates, and the stock surged 10%.

The earnings beat was made easier because analysts had been cutting their estimates on the company since the beginning of the year.

The stock surge came even though the company reported its weakest sales growth in a year.

Amazon (AMZN) shares jumped an eye-popping 14%, even though the company swung to a first-quarter loss and forecast a loss for the current quarter – one for which analysts had been expecting a slight profit.

Meanwhile, the Nasdaq Composite Index is firmly ensconced in record territory.

If you're a tech stock bull, the current trend is now you're friend.

Yet every quarterly earnings report contains at least some fodder for bulls and bears alike.

For example, Google bears have long pointed to the continuing decline in the company's ad prices as a red flag.

And that downward trend accelerated on Google's own sites in the first quarter, falling 13% from a year ago.

Overall, the company's cost-per-click metric fell 7%.

Yet Google executives, on their earnings call, finally shed some light on why those prices are falling.

Traffic on its YouTube video site is surging around the globe, and ad prices on that property tend to be lower, especially overseas.

What the company is losing in pricing power, it's gaining in sheer volume.

Amazon likewise had a new nugget to share with investors, as CEO Jeff Bezos shared that the company's web services unit is worth more than $5 billion annually -- even posting an operating profit last quarter.

Amazon stock bulls, who've been buying the stock for its top-line growth for 20 years without much regard to the company's bottom line, feasted on that news.

Microsoft bulls were so thrilled with its results that they drove the shares up high enough to match the average price target of the 31 analysts who cover the stock.

Look for those 12-month price targets to get a boost soon -- even though those same analysts see the company's sales growth falling to less than 5% for the fiscal year ending in June, 2016.

Every piece of news, it seems, is another reason to buy.

So what now for retail investors?

With Apple reporting on Monday and Wall Street salivating to hear details about the launch of its new watch, look for the stampede of bulls to continue to drown out any bearish news.

Longer term, however, it's worth remembering the old trader's adage that stocks tend to "climb a wall of worry."

That means shares usually keep going up when all the bad news that might derail a company's performance is already accounted for, or "baked in," to their price.

This week, with investors interpreting all news as good, it's more accurate to say that tech stocks are now climbing a wall of euphoria.