Firm U.S. dollar weighs on sentiment… Slips from 1-week high as oil prices ease…

T. Boone Pickens thought oil was going to hit $150 last year and go up from there. I don’t mean to pick on him. He’s worth about $3 billion. He’s earned his stripes. I have nothing but respect for the man.

Pickens wasn’t the only person who got 2008 wrong. There were plenty of others.

When it comes down to it, anybody can make predictions. It’s not very hard. But it is hard to make ones that do what they purport to do: predict.

My advice is to take them with a grain of salt. If predicting the markets were so easy to do, most of Wall Street’s brightest fund managers wouldn’t have lost 40 percent or more last year.

I’ve made my share…