Berkshire Hathaway is entering its next chapter: Warren Buffett has handed the keys to Greg Abel, but the playbook still looks familiar — buy great businesses, stay patient, keep dry powder, and swing hard only when the fat pitch arrives. We unpack Berkshire’s massive cash balance, its surprising new Alphabet position, what Buffett’s move into Google says about updating your beliefs, and why the real lesson for FOMO investors may be the least exciting one: patience, position sizing, and the discipline to do nothing until the opportunity is obvious.

A note before listening: We recorded this conversation on May 15, 2026, when Intuitive Surgical was trading at roughly $420 per share. As of July 21, the stock is trading around $354—approximately 16% lower. If we found the business compelling at $420, it is certainly worth another look at today’s price.

Intuitive Surgical is one of the great zero-to-one business stories of the past 30 years.

The company helped create robotic surgery, built a dominant ecosystem around its da Vinci platform, and quietly became one of the world’s most successful medical-technology companies. Today, it has thousands of systems installed around the world, millions of annual procedures, and a recurring-revenue engine built around instruments, accessories, and service.

But is the next chapter already priced into the stock?

In this episode, we trace Intuitive Surgical’s evolution from a Stanford research project into the leader in robotic surgery. We explore the company’s competitive advantages—including surgeon training, clinical evidence, hospital workflows, regulatory approvals, and decades of procedural data—and ask whether those advantages can withstand growing competition.

We also discuss the potential beyond Intuitive’s traditional surgical markets. Could its Ion platform, expansion into cardiac procedures, international growth, and AI-powered surgical assistance turn Intuitive into something much larger than a medical-device company?

The central question: Is Intuitive Surgical simply an expensive, high-quality compounder—or an underappreciated robotics and AI platform approaching another inflection point?

Abivax became one of June 2026's wildest biotech stories: a potential best-in-class drug to treat ulcerative colitis, a scary “cancer” headline, a violent selloff, and then a dramatic rebound after Part 2 safety data helped reframe the risk. We unpack how the market may have misread the cancer risk and why deep context matters in biotech investing and taking advantage of wild swings.

References:
-Brian's X poll on the part 2 safety data
-Brian's practical approach to using cash-secured puts to get paid while waiting.

Is SpaceX's $1.75 Trillion IPO more like Project Hail Mary or Interstellar?  We unpack the SpaceX IPO from a valuation lens. We synthesize the highly varied perspectives from the ultra bulls (Gavin Baker), the bears (Jim Chanos, Nicolas Owens, and Suryansh Sharma - Morningstar), and the astute observers (Ashwath Damodaran, aka "the dean of valuation").

Michael Burry is back, and this time the newsletter gang is paying monthly. We explore his shift from hedge fund manager to Cassandra Unchained newsletter writer, the ideas that stood out to us, and his bearish take on Nvidia and Palantir in the middle of a very frothy AI market. 

Brian and Mik unpack a live activist situation at Humm Group, a small Australian non-bank lender now facing public pressure from investor Jeremy Raper, who owns ~6% of the company and is pushing for a vote on board change ahead of a February shareholder meeting.

They walk through the competing narratives: a founder-led board defending its strategy versus an activist arguing the company is undervalued due to poor governance and capital allocation. Along the way, they discuss downside protection, third-party bids, and special situations.

Rather than a stock pitch, this is a case study in pattern recognition: how governance disputes, excess cash, and strategic activist pressure can create asymmetric outcomes. 

In this year-end episode, Brian and Mik reflect on FOMO Investing—its origins, how the podcast has evolved, and where they hope to take it in 2026. They revisit key themes from the past year, including quantum computing and GLP-1 biotechs, and share plans for the year ahead. 

After the post-IPO drawdown,  we review whether Rivian is worth another look. Rivian's software-first design, the Volkswagen JV, the R2, as well as its own autonomous driver investments, seem to indicate it may be more than just another EV manufacturer.  

$15 salads, a 90% drawdown, and a very confused stock market. We explore Sweetgreen as a potential turnaround—what’s broken, what might work, and why demand alone doesn’t save a business. Sometimes the hardest investments aren’t the complex ones—they’re the obvious ones. 

In this episode of FOMO Investing, Brian and Mik revisit IonQ (IONQ).

Building on our original Theory of the Case from November 2024 and our January 2025 update, we unpack recent developments, including:

• Management changes (CEO and CFO),
• IonQ's competitive position in the broader quantum market.
• Challenging valuation metrics ($15 -16 billion on $100 million of revenue)
• IonQ's $2 billion in Equity financing at $93/share  (h/t to Andrew Walker's piece that has a great breakdown of this, link below)

🔗 Links

• Theory of the Case — IonQ (Nov 2024): https://fomo.transistor.fm/episodes/theory-of-the-case-ionq
• IonQ Update (Jan 2025): https://fomo.transistor.fm/episodes/ionq-january-2025
• Andrew Walker on IonQ financing: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/the-evolution-of-meme-stock-financing
• Chris Monroe on quantum computing and IonQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eo_VV0Z4aE&t=6249s