I've just always been a bit of a dork.

There's always the risk that there are unknown unknowns.

A lot of news is just entertainment masquerading as news.

Actually, one of the better indicators historically of how well the stock market will do is just a Gallup poll, when you ask Americans if you think it's a good time to invest in stocks, except it goes the opposite direction of what you would expect. When the markets going up, it in fact makes it more prone toward decline.

Basically, books were a luxury item before the printing press.

To the extent that you can find ways where you're making predictions, there's no substitute for testing yourself on real-world situations that you don't know the answer to in advance.