These are First Eagle Global Fund's own holdings, not the firm's. Percentages are of the stock positions in its latest filing — the fund's cash and bonds are not included. The First Eagle Global Fund is a value-oriented vehicle that buys shares of companies in any country and at any size, alongside bonds, and typically holds a slice of gold and precious metals. Its managers treat that gold not as a bet on prices but as a store of purchasing power, a defensive layer meant to soften the blows when markets fall. It is the house's flagship: the fund that made First Eagle's name, and the one that established the firm's habit of sitting patiently in cash and gold when good businesses look too expensive. The fund launched on April 28, 1970, and for decades was steered by Jean-Marie Eveillard, a disciple of Benjamin Graham who argued that the only risk worth worrying about was the permanent loss of capital. He proved the point during the dot-com boom. While rivals chased technology stocks in the late 1990s, Eveillard refused to pay up for companies he considered overvalued, parking the fund's money in cash and gold instead. That stubbornness cost it years of lagging the market—investors grew so frustrated that roughly two-thirds of the assets walked out the door. "After one bad year investors were upset," he later recalled. "After two they were mad, and after three they were gone." When the bubble burst in 2000 and those same stocks collapsed, the Global Fund's caution was vindicated while others were losing money. First Eagle took over the fund in 1999 after acquiring Société Générale Asset Management, renaming the old SocGen International Fund and placing it in the hands of its Global Value team. Today it is managed by Matthew McLennan and Kimball Brooker, who buy good businesses with a margin of safety, hold them for long stretches rather than trading, and rarely pressure companies to change.
$34.10B