A LONG-HORIZON, multi-instrument REGIME-ROTATION strategy on US equity/defensive ETFs — a mechanism family with essentially zero history in this corpus and nothing to do with the dying crypto families (directional single-name momentum overfit, ratio-spread mean-reversion L96, cross-venue funding carry, naked-strangle VRP). The regime is defined on the broad market (SPY.USEQ) by a long absolute-trend filter; capital rotates between a risk-ON sleeve (QQQ, higher-beta equity) and a risk-OFF sleeve (TLT long-duration Treasuries + GLD gold, the classic uncorrelated defensives). This is NOT cross-sectional ETF ranking (that sibling, SectorEtfCrossSectionalMomentumRotation, is already in the pipeline) — it is an ABSOLUTE trend-regime switch, a structurally different signal. Why it is robust where the crypto clones die: (1) USEQ is COMMISSION-FREE (cost = ~1bp half-spread + impact, ~0.02-0.05% round-trip on these mega-liquid ETFs), so the fee graveyard that killed the funding carries does not apply. (2) SPY/QQQ/TLT/GLD all have DECADES of split-adjusted daily history, so walk-forward windows and the last-20% holdout are densely populated across multiple full bull/bear cycles (2000 dot-com, 2008 GFC, 2020 COVID, 2022 drawdown) — the exact regime diversity these strategies need. (3) Holds last weeks-to-months with only a handful of regime flips per year, so per-trade capture is multiple percent against a sub-0.05% cost — >20x the cost floor, the opposite of the sub-fee microstructure trap. The edge is a well-documented behavioral/structural one (trend persistence + flight-to-quality correlation flip) that commission-free daily execution finally makes harvestable without friction killing it. FEE ARITHMETIC: a typical risk-on QQQ hold spans ~2-6 months and captures on the order of +8-15% in an uptrend leg; a risk-off TLT/GLD hold preserves capital / earns +2-5% when equities fall. Even a conservative average realized per-switch capture of ~2-4% net of the ~0.04% round-trip leaves avg_trade_return_pct comfortably above 1.5%. Low/whipsaw regimes produce a few extra round-trips per year — bounded by the slope-confirmation buffer (hysteresis) so whipsaw churn is minimal.