So I was digging through February's market data and noticed something pretty interesting about which ETFs actually managed to outperform when everything else was getting hammered. The S&P 500 was down 0.9% that month, Nasdaq got absolutely wrecked with a 3.4% drop, but there were some highest performing etfs that quietly crushed it.

The AI panic was real in February. Anthropic dropped that Claude Code tool that can modernize COBOL systems, and suddenly IBM got destroyed - down 23.7% for the month. Meanwhile, geopolitical stuff was heating up too. U.S.-Iran tensions spiked hard, military exercises in the Strait of Hormuz, and eventually strikes happened on Feb. 28. Oil prices jumped on that uncertainty, which actually helped certain sectors.

Here's where it gets interesting - some of the highest performing etfs of the month were leveraged plays that capitalized on these exact moves. South Korea's semiconductor ETF KORU was up 96.47% because Samsung and SK Hynix were riding the AI chip demand wave. Energy ETFs like NRGU jumped 34.6% on the geopolitical oil spike. Utilities got a boost too with UTSL up 34% thanks to all that data center power demand, and industrials held up decently with DUSL gaining 22.5%.

What's wild is how these highest performing etfs all benefited from specific market narratives - AI disruption fears, geopolitical risk premiums, and the energy infrastructure play. If you were watching the right sectors in February, there were definitely opportunities even when the broader market was struggling. The Russell 2000 at least managed a 0.7% gain, but these leveraged plays completely outpaced that. Worth reviewing what drove these moves if you're looking at sector rotation going forward.