The S&P 500 jumped 0.92% on Monday as the People's Bank of China (PBOC) announced late Sunday that it lowered the reserve requirement ratio (RRR) for all banks by 100 basis points to 18.5 percent, effective April 20. The S&P 500 pulled back and consolidated at around the 2,100 level on Tuesday after DuPont [NYSE:DD] and IBM [NYSE:IBM] reported disappointing earnings. The S&P 500 resumed its upward move the following day when AT&T [NYSE:T] and eBay [NASDAQ:EBAY] came out with positive earnings reports late Tuesday.

Three of the most anticipated earnings reports from big tech bellwethers, Microsoft [NASDAQ:MSFT], Google [NASDAQ:GOOGL] and Amazon [NASDAQ:AMZN], came out late Thursday. After the market digested their mixed quarterly results, the S&P 500 took off and hit an all-time intraday high of 2,120.92 on Friday before pulling back to close at 2,117.69, up 1.75% for the week.

Microsoft shares surged 10.45% on Friday to finish at $47.87 per share after the company reported both revenue and earnings per share that exceeded Wall Street’s expectations. The markets focused on Microsoft's comments that its commercial cloud business grew 106% year-over-year, as more businesses are paying to use software, including Office 365, Azure and Dynamics CRM Online, housed in Microsoft-managed data centers. 

While the cloud business is becoming Microsoft’s fastest growing segment with an annualized revenue approaching $6.3 billion, Microsoft has not disclosed profit information as the Azure platform is facing fierce competitors, such as the Amazon Web Services (AWS). 

Google shares jumped 4.85% to an intraday high of $584.70 per share on Friday after the company reported its revenues and earnings that were worse than Wall Street’s expectations. The markets seemed to be undeterred by Google's misses, as they believe that Google may be starting to get their costs under control. 

In fact, Google said in their earnings statement that capital expenditures were $2.93 billion in the first-quarter 2015, up 24.68% year-on-year while operating expenses jumped 22.64% to $6.5 billion, or 37% of revenues in the last quarter, from $5.3 billion, or 35% of revenues in the quarter one year ago.

Amazon rocketed 16.07% to an all-time intraday high of $452.65 per share before pulling back to close at $445.1 per share on Friday, up 14.13% after the company reported both revenue and earnings per share that beat Wall Street’s expectations. The company said their AWS cloud service business logged revenues of $1.57 billion last quarter, up 49% year-on-year with a run rate of about $6 billion a year. AWS’s profit jumped 8.16% to $265 million, from $245 million a year ago.

The market viewed the growth in Amazon’s AWS segment as positive, and shifted its perception of Amazon from a less profitable e-commerce retailer to a more profitable technology company with high margins. The reality is that Amazon still lost $57 million in the first quarter, as overall operating margins shrank to 1.1%. Even if Amazon became profitable by next year, its price-to-earnings multiple will be north of 100.

From the technical viewpoint, the S&P 500 broke out the upper trendline of the symmetrical triangle, at the 2,100 level, and is now ready to take out the technical resistance of 2,120. In the symmetrical triangle breakout event, our near-term projected target for the S&P 500 is 2,147, determined by adding the width at the top of the pattern to the point of breakout. 

S&P 500 Summary: +2.86% YTD as of 04/24/15
Barclay Hedge Fund Index: +2.54% YTD 

Outperforming Sectors: Healthcare +8.55 YTD, Consumer discretionary +7.48% YTD, Information technology +4.05% YTD, Telecommunication services +3.75% YTD, and Materials +3.28% YTD.

Underperforming Sectors: Energy +1.94% YTD, Consumer staples +0.98% YTD, Industrials –0.34% YTD, Financials –2.00% YTD, and Utilities –4.43% YTD.