Personal Investment Guide

I’m planning on doing some investing and would prefer to do some passive investing if possible. I know about stocks and would prefer not to do them. I’ve been pretty successful with speculating on currencies and gold, but I understand that those are quite different in how they are evaluated relative to ETFs and DRIPS. That said, I would like to learn techniques to evaluate these two financial instruments (ie: mean reversion and ratio analyses techniques). Anyhow, best answer (not including investopedia or going to school) wins 10 points, thanks!