After taking a beating during the stock market bubble of the late '90s, the last few years have revived the prestige of this value fund manager and gold investor. Eveillard and co-manager Charles de Vaulx shared International Fund Manager of the Year honors in 2002 from research firm Morningstar, which recently added First Eagle Global as an Analyst Pick for international hybrid funds. And U.S. News & World Report last month recommended Eveillard's fund as an investment for the long haul.

Eveillard's global fund has averaged total annual returns of almost 12 percent over the past 30 years, and more than 10 percent for the past three years while the S&P 500 dropped nearly 38 percent. And even in his bad years, Eveillard has been very good about protecting investors' money: he has never lost more than 1.3 percent in a given year, and that only happened once, in 1990.

Eveillard's performance as a stock and bond investor would be impressive enough. But these days he's drawing even more attention for his take on gold; while most of the financial world gave up on gold investing during its 20-year dry run through the '80s and '90s, First Eagle maintained its gold fund and lately the rewards have been stellar. Eveillard and de Vaulx continue to caution investors to think of gold as a hedge that should be just a small part of your portfolio, but with their investing skill, it may be not just a hedge, but an iron wall against a bear market -- First Eagle Gold's 107 percent gain in 2002 made it the best performer among all mutual funds last year.

Since appearing in Wall $treet Week with FORTUNE's July 12 broadcast, most of Eveillard's stock picks for the program and Web site have done relatively well. While the S&P 500 lost 11 percent over the past seven months, five of eight stocks mentioned back in July by Eveillard had risen in value: Freeport McMoran Copper & Gold; Newmont Mining; Tyco; Liberty Media; and Vivendi Universal. One company, TVX Gold, was acquired last month, underscoring the effectiveness of one of First Eagle's primary methods for valuing a potential investment: figuring out how much an acquirer would pay for the company. Eveillard's other two stocks mentioned at the time, Rayonier and McDonald's, continue to struggle.

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