Investment Behavior and Traffic – An Analogy

I recently heard an analogy that caught my attention, as it definitely rings true.

“Investing is like being stuck in traffic: the lane you’re in is moving to slow so you jump over to the one that appears to be going faster, but when you get there that lane slows down to because of all the other people that jumped into it”. Lesson? Chasing performance into what appears to be the hottest asset class, sector, et al, isn’t the best idea, because the profit has already been made by the people who got into it first. You could be jumping into a bubble without realizing it.
The point is, the more you try and hop around to the fast lane, it ends up taking you much longer to get to your destination.