Unfortunately I don't have any simple answers for you. Invest in educating yourself across a broad range of topics in finance and history, and then go take calculated risks with amounts that you are willing to lose. Thinks of losses as tuition paid and profits as passing grades. Write down your thought process prior to each decision so you know your state of mind at the time and can learn from it objectively when you have the benefit of hindsight.

And don't get discouraged. It's very hard to time the market - it's much easier to put a process in place that you can follow at regular intervals. The hard part is then trusting the process.