NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Tech earnings in the fourth quarter were, as Tony the Tiger would say, Grrrrrreat!

According to Thomson First Call, the S&P 500 technology companies that have released quarterly results so far have posted earnings growth of 53 percent from the fourth quarter of 2002. (A few, like Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Applied Materials, are still on tap to report this month.)

What's more, tech companies beat consensus estimates by an average of 17 percent.

But with few exceptions, tech investors failed to take comfort in the snap, crackle and pop in these results. Intel, Yahoo!, Motorola, Texas Instruments, and most recently Cisco Systems, were all dumped by Wall Street after reporting solid numbers.

Overall, the Nasdaq has pulled back about 5 percent since the start of earnings season in mid-January. Apparently, tech investors are a lot like Mikey -- they don't like anything. (I'm on a bit of a cereal kick today in case you haven't noticed. Mmm...raisin bran.)

What's the problem? Many tech executives remain cautious. Even though several companies have lifted their first quarter guidance, they haven't done so by a great enough margin to satisfy investors that are expecting nothing short of perfection.

Despite strong 4Q results, tech stocks have taken a hit during earnings season.

Investors aren't falling for the old game of underpromising and overdelivering anymore. The market realized that fourth quarter estimates were probably too low and as a result, didn't get overly excited when companies beat these numbers.

Techs are the victims of their own success.

What investors were waiting for, and did not get, was the kind of glowing optimism from tech executives that was evident in the late 1990s and early 2000. That's probably not going to return anytime soon.

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One tech executive conceded that his company is going out of its way to not set the bar too high.

Ed Gillis, chief financial officer of storage software developer Veritas Software (VRTS: Research, Estimates), said the company didn't see a need to lift its 2004 sales guidance when it reported its fourth quarter results last week. But he expressed confidence that Veritas should be able to do so at some point.

"If the economy is strengthening, why wouldn't sales be higher? We're just trying to be cautious and prudent in starting out the year," Gillis said.

So techs face a bit of a conundrum now. In one respect, it should seem easy to please Wall Street in the first quarter. After all, the first quarter of 2003 was fairly weak, with the war in Iraq looming and the SARS outbreak.

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With that in mind, analysts are predicting that S&P 500 tech companies should report an average earnings increase of 50 percent from the first quarter of 2003.

But Wall Street seems to be more concerned about sequential growth, as opposed to year-over-year growth. "People are not focusing that much on easy comparisons to last year," said Walter Price, manager of the Wells Fargo Specialized Technology fund. "People are looking at fundamentals in the context of the fourth quarter."

However, the first quarter of the calendar year tends to be weaker than the fourth quarter for simple seasonal reasons. On the corporate side, you don't have the so-called year-end budget flushes to help boost sales. And consumers tend to take a break on electronics spending after the holidays.

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Investors don't want to hear about seasonal downticks, though. To paraphrase a hit by Janet Jackson (who I don't think has had enough "visibility" recently...ha! ), investors want to know what techs have done for them lately.

The economy is allegedly strengthening and as such, investors want to see continued growth in sales and earnings. The Nasdaq didn't surge 85 percent in 2003 on hopes of a modest rebound in tech spending.

"Tech companies are not saying that things are recovering quickly. They are saying that things are recovering gradually," said Joe Cooper, research analyst with Thomson First Call. "But tech stocks are not priced for slow improvement."

Tech investors hoping for the high-octane sugar rush of a bowl of Count Chocula may have to get used to settling for a healthy dose of boring Special K instead.

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