This is not real financial advice. I have no fiduciary duty toward you, whoever you are. Past results are not indicative of future returns. Proceed at your own risk.
I subscribe to a fairly strong version of the Efficient Markets Hypothesis: it’s unlikely for you as a retail investor to beat the market. It’s not impossible, and in particular you can do well investing in sectors and companies that you know a lot about, but most people will lose money, relative to the benchmark, most of the time. See Malkiel: A Random Walk down Wall Street for a good book-length treatment of this idea.
So what should you invest in? A combination of index funds including U.S. stocks, international stocks, and bonds has done well historically. Pick a target allocation based on your risk/reward goals, and rebalance periodically. See The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing for more details. We live in a golden age of passive investing, with Vanguard and Fidelity (among others) offering very cheap stock and bond ETFs to track whatever index you care about.
If you still want to pick individual stocks, The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham is the classic book on security valuation, but kind of dated. This is also kind of a golden age for retail stock investors, with more and more brokerages offering free trades and fractional shares. More info:
Ray Dalio on the Business Cycle
How The Economic Machine Works (In 30 Minutes), YouTube
‘Principles For Navigating Big Debt Crises’, PDF