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(Bloomberg) -- Millennium Management, Citadel and other top hedge funds posted lackluster returns in February, as market gyrations reversed momentum on key trades and clobbered popular stocks.

Multistrategy firms with an equity market-neutral bias took some of the biggest hits. Those losses were driven by overcrowding in a small group of stocks, particularly health care and technology.

Jain Global fell about 1%, according to a person familiar with the matter. Millennium lost 1.3% and Citadel dipped 1.7%.

The PivotalPath Multi-Strategy Index rose 0.2% in February.

President Donald Trump continued to stoke market unrest last month with tariff threats, just as inflation rose more than expected and added another layer of uncertainty to equities. A major money-losing strategy was index rebalancing, when traders bet on whether companies will be added or removed from an index on a quarterly or semi-annual basis.

The volatility in late January that persisted into February “drove lots of questions around hedge fund performance,” JPMorgan Chase & Co. analysts wrote in a note to clients. The analysts added that crowding in technology, media, telecom and some consumer names yielded “pockets of painful performance.”

The S&P 500 Index fell 1.4% during the month, and was up just 1.2% for the year through February, lagging behind the Euro Stoxx Index and the MSCI China Index by more than 10 percentage points in the first two months of the year, in dollar terms.

The turmoil took a toll on major macro hedge funds too.

Said Haidar’s Haidar Jupiter Fund slumped 6.3% in February, though it’s up 8.6% for the year. Brevan Howard’s BH Master fund lost 1.6% in February and is down 4.5% since Jan. 1. Its BH Alpha Strategies fared comparatively well, adding 0.7% in February, for a year-to-date gain of 2.25%.

Not-so-Magnificent Seven

The so-called Magnificent Seven tech stocks that have driven hedge fund returns in recent years are sputtering as investors question their valuations and hefty spending on artificial intelligence. In contrast, European stocks have fared better and Chinese equities are surging.

Some stock-focused US funds shared the pain of multistrats, with Goldman Sachs Group Inc. clients employing that strategy on average down 1.4% in February, the bank said in a note. By contrast, their Asia peers gained 1.9% on average for the month, while European funds rose 0.5%.

Balyasny Asset Management, which oversees $22 billion, gained the most among the big multimanagers, rising 0.9%. Singapore-based Dymon Asia Capital, which manages about $3 billion, climbed 1%.

Representatives for the funds declined to comment or didn’t return requests for comment.

--With assistance from Katherine Burton.