Suggestions on buying gold or foreign currencies?

Not asking for investment advice or even opinions.

I want to move US based assets into either gold or foreign currencies like Yen or CHF. Currency options at the retail level would maybe be interesting too. I’ve got a mix of Vanguard, SmithBarney and Fidelity accounts at the moment and would ideally like to use one of these. However, I haven’t found anything on their sites.

Citi SmithBarney has some potential I’ll look up later. Any other suggestions?

Everbank offers foreign-currency deposit accounts and CDs, hope that helps.

It seems the world and his brother is buying NZ currency right now (especially the Japanese). Bad for NZ exporters but fun for everyone else.

If you want to use one of your existing accounts, what about buying some precious metals mining equities? Since they produce gold (and other metals) as their product, the prices should be well insulated from the vagaries of the dollar.

Gold stocks and similar equities seem to have more correlation with broader market equities than in years past. And while metals prices have risen significantly - so have the costs associated with their extraction, particularly fuel.