How Brokers Are Checked

The first check: can an Australian resident actually use it

The first thing checked is whether a resident of Australia can open, fund and withdraw from the account. A broker that cannot be used from Australia is not ranked at all, however good its platform looks. This is a pass-or-fail gate, not a score.

Funding is checked against the methods Australian readers actually use, including PayID and bank transfer, and withdrawals are checked for the same paths. The regulator position is recorded exactly as stated: FxPro is licensed by the FCA (UK) and CySEC. It does not hold an ASIC licence, so Australian residents deal with an offshore entity — check this before funding.

The arithmetic behind the margin and pip-value calculators

The margin calculator multiplies three things: the number of lots, the contract size of 100 oz per standard lot, and the gold price, then divides by the leverage cap. In words, margin equals lots times 100 times price, divided by the leverage ratio. At a reference price of about 4275.0 and a cap of 1:200, a 0.10-lot position works out to about $85.50. The result is the amount of the position the broker requires as collateral, not a cost and not a limit on loss.

The pip-value calculator converts a one-pip move into account currency. For gold, one pip is 0.01 of a US dollar per ounce, so a standard lot of 100 oz moves A$1 per pip before any currency conversion, and a 0.10-lot position moves about A$0.10 per pip. The calculator states the pip size, the lot size and the resulting value per pip, and it shows the conversion step explicitly rather than hiding it inside a single output number.

Both calculators take the leverage cap as an input rather than a target. The 1:200 figure is the maximum available to Australian clients and is treated as a ceiling; the calculator will accept a lower effective exposure and will show the margin that follows. Nothing in the arithmetic implies a reader should use the cap, and the output is presented alongside the risk framing that a geared gold position can lose more than the margin committed.

Rounding is applied only at the final step. Intermediate values keep full precision so a reader recalculating by hand reaches the same result, and the displayed figure is rounded for readability rather than adjusted to look neater. Where a displayed number depends on the live gold price, the page says so, because the same formula run at a different price returns a different margin. The formula is the stable part; the price input is not.

Every calculator output is reproducible with a pen and the published inputs. The page lists the lot size, the pip size, the reference price and the leverage cap in the same place as the result, so a reader can substitute their own position size and see how the margin and pip value scale. If a reader's own broker applies a different contract size or a different leverage cap, their figure will differ, and that difference is the point of showing the working rather than only the answer.

The limits of the testing

The desk does not run live money through every broker it writes about, so it cannot vouch for execution quality, slippage or the speed of a withdrawal from first-hand experience. Those things are described in terms of what they depend on, and readers are told to verify them with the broker.

Documents change without notice, so a figure is only as current as the date it was read. A number that has moved since the check is a re-check, not an error, and the corrections page explains how that distinction is handled. The desk would rather mark a gap than fill it with a plausible-sounding number.

Where the numbers come from

Numbers come from the broker's own documents, and the date each document was read is recorded alongside the figure. Costs are described by what they consist of and what they depend on, not by adjectives. Where a figure is not published by the broker, the page says so instead of guessing.

Leverage is treated as a cap rather than a setting to aim at. Where the maximum available to Australian clients is up to 1:200, that is reported as the ceiling, and the worked figure used for illustration is that at 1:200 a 0.10-lot gold position needs about $85.50 margin. No other ratio is presented as available.

How a broker fact is dated and re-checked

Each broker fact on the site carries the date it was last confirmed against the broker's own published material. That date is recorded when a person reads the source and finds the page's wording still accurate, not when the page was last edited for style or layout. A fact that has not been re-confirmed within its review window is treated as due for checking, and the date shown tells a reader exactly how old the confirmation is.

Re-checking follows a fixed sequence. The reviewer opens the broker's disclosure for the relevant item, compares it word for word with what the page states, and records one of three outcomes: unchanged, changed, or no longer verifiable. Unchanged facts get a new date. Changed facts are amended and the change is noted. Facts that can no longer be confirmed from the source are removed rather than left standing on the strength of an earlier check.

The regulatory caveat gets the strictest treatment. The statement that FxPro is licensed by the FCA and CySEC and does not hold an ASIC licence is checked against the broker's own licensing disclosure, and the consequence for Australian readers, that they deal with an offshore entity, is restated each time. The instruction to check before funding is part of the fact, not decoration, and it stays attached to the licensing statement wherever that statement appears.

Dating is what makes the rest of the page honest. Without a date, a reader cannot distinguish a fact confirmed last week from one carried forward for a year, and both look identical on the screen. The date also creates an audit trail: when a broker changes its terms, the page shows when the change was picked up. Where a fact is stable, such as the contract size of 100 oz per standard lot, the date still appears so the reader can see it was checked rather than assumed.

The known limits of this method

The method describes structure and arithmetic, not the live terms a reader will actually be offered. It cannot tell you the spread, commission or swap on your account, because those were not supplied and are not published here as numbers. It cannot tell you a minimum deposit. What it can do is show how margin and pip value are computed and what the cost of a trade consists of, so a reader knows which questions to ask the broker before funding anything.

The reference price is a snapshot, not a quote. A margin figure calculated at about 4275.0 will differ from one calculated at the price in force when a reader places an order, and the difference grows with position size. The leverage cap of 1:200 is stated as a maximum, and the method does not attempt to model what a reader will actually be granted, since that depends on the broker's assessment and the reader's own choices.

Regulatory coverage is described, not evaluated. The page states that FxPro is licensed by the FCA and CySEC and does not hold an ASIC licence, and that Australian residents therefore deal with an offshore entity. It does not attempt to rank that arrangement against an onshore one, because the practical consequences depend on the reader's circumstances and on dispute-resolution routes that are outside the scope of a methodology page.

The method also cannot verify a reader's own inputs. If a reader enters a lot size, a price or a leverage setting that differs from what their account actually applies, the output will be internally consistent but wrong for their situation. The safeguard is transparency: every input is shown next to every output, and the formulas are stated in words so a reader can check the arithmetic against their own contract note rather than accepting a figure on trust.

What updates automatically and what a person checks

The gold reference price refreshes automatically, because it is a market quote that changes continuously through the trading week. Any margin example built on that price is recalculated when the price feed updates, so the worked figure of about $85.50 at 1:200 reflects the price in force when the page was generated. Nothing else on the page moves on a live basis; the contract specification, the pip size and the leverage cap are static until a person changes them.

Broker facts are reviewed by hand. The platform list, the funding methods available to Australian readers, the serving entity and the regulatory caveat are checked against the broker's own disclosures on a scheduled review, not scraped on a timer. A person reads the source, confirms the wording still matches what the page states, and records the date. If the source has changed, the page is amended and the new review date is stamped, so a reader can see how current the fact is.

The split exists because the two kinds of information fail differently. A stale price is obvious within minutes and corrects itself, so automation handles it. A stale broker fact is invisible and can mislead someone into funding an account on the wrong understanding, so it gets a human check. The regulatory caveat is treated as the highest-stakes item in this group: FxPro is licensed by the FCA and CySEC but does not hold an ASIC licence, so Australian residents deal with an offshore entity, and that sentence is verified rather than assumed.

Automatic refresh does not mean unattended. The price feed is monitored, and if it stops returning a quote the example is withheld rather than shown with an old number. Manual review does not mean infrequent. The schedule is set by how quickly each fact can change, with broker terms and regulatory status reviewed more often than instrument definitions. Between reviews, the page carries the date of the last check so a reader can judge freshness themselves instead of trusting an undated claim.

Where each class of figure on this site comes from

Every figure on this site falls into one of three classes, and each class has a different origin. The gold reference price is a market snapshot of XAU/USD taken at the time of writing, quoted against a reference of about 4275.0. Broker facts, such as the platforms offered and the maximum leverage cap of 1:200, come from the broker's own published material. Contract specifications, including 1 standard lot = 100 oz and a pip of 0.01, are fixed instrument definitions rather than anything a broker supplies.

Margin and pip-value arithmetic is calculated by us from the contract specification and the reference price, not copied from a provider. At 1:200, a 0.10-lot gold position needs about $85.50 margin, and that figure follows directly from the lot size, the price and the leverage cap. No spread, commission, swap or minimum deposit number appears on the site because none was supplied to us. Where those costs matter to a reader, the page describes what the cost consists of and what it depends on.

Funding details are drawn from the broker's listed methods, which for Australian readers are PayID and bank transfer, and are presented as availability rather than as a recommendation. Regulatory status is taken from the licences the broker discloses: FCA in the UK and CySEC in Cyprus. The absence of an ASIC licence is stated as a fact about the entity, not as a judgement, and readers are told to verify it themselves before funding an account.

Each class is kept separate so a reader can tell what is fixed, what is calculated and what is reported. A change in the gold price moves the reference price and any margin example built on it, but it does not change the lot size or the pip size. A change in the broker's published terms moves the leverage cap and the platform list, but it does not change the arithmetic. Keeping the classes apart is what lets any single figure be traced back to its origin.

What happens when two sources disagree

When two sources disagree, the broker's own current disclosure wins for any fact about that broker. If a third-party summary says one thing about the platform list, the funding methods or the leverage cap and the broker's own material says another, the page follows the broker and the discrepancy is noted internally. The reasoning is simple: the broker is the party that sets the terms, so its published position is the authoritative one for facts about its own service.

For the regulatory caveat, the licensing disclosure is the deciding source. The page states that FxPro is licensed by the FCA and CySEC and does not hold an ASIC licence, and if any secondary source suggests otherwise, the licensing disclosure governs and the secondary claim is not repeated. Where a discrepancy cannot be resolved from primary material, the page states less rather than more: the disputed detail is dropped and the reader is pointed to the broker's own disclosure to confirm it.

Disagreement about the gold price is handled differently, because there is no single authoritative quote. Different venues and different brokers show slightly different prices at the same moment, and none of them is wrong. The page uses one stated reference price, currently about 4275.0, and labels it as a reference rather than a live quote. Any margin example is tied to that stated price so a reader can see which input produced the output.

Unresolved disagreement is disclosed rather than smoothed over. If a broker fact cannot be confirmed because two primary pages contradict each other, the page does not pick the more convenient version; it withholds the detail and says the position is unconfirmed. This is deliberately conservative. A missing fact costs a reader a question to the broker, while a wrong fact can cost them money, and the method is built to prefer the first outcome over the second every time.