Buy-and-hold wins on absolute return — 16.4× compounded over the sample. The four strategies preserve capital instead, with maximum drawdowns from 1.4% to 3.9% against QQQ's −35%. A risk-budget tradeoff, not a signal-quality failure: strategies are in market roughly 5–10% of days. RSI(2)+VIX v2 is the best risk-adjusted performer — Sharpe 0.91 with a 1.4% peak drawdown.