How we check a broker before it is ranked

The first test: can a South African open, fund and withdraw

The first question we ask about any broker is whether a resident of South Africa can actually open an account, fund it in rand and withdraw again. A broker that cannot clear that bar is not ranked, however good its platform looks. We look for local cards and bank transfers in ZAR, and e-wallets where they are offered, because a funding route that only works in another currency is not a practical route here.

Only after that first test do we look at the trading side: the platform set, the instrument coverage and the leverage cap. Leverage is treated as a maximum, not a target. The figure we may quote is a cap of up to 1:200 for retail and up to 1:500 for eligible or professional clients depending on instrument, and we show what it means in margin terms rather than as a selling point. For example, at that retail cap a 0.10-lot gold position needs about $85.50 margin.

We also check which legal entity would hold a South African account, because the entity decides which regulator and which protections apply. The caveat we repeat is the one we were given: FxPro is licensed by the FCA (UK) and CySEC, and an FxPro entity holds an FSCA licence in South Africa — check which entity your own account is opened with.

Why the XAU/USD price on this page can differ from your broker quote

A live gold price on any public page is a snapshot of one feed at one moment, so it will rarely match the quote inside your trading platform to the last cent. FxPro streams its own bid and ask from its liquidity providers into MT4, MT5, cTrader or FxPro Edge, and those prices carry that broker's spread and any markup on the underlying market. Karoo Picks works from a reference price of about 4275.0 on XAU/USD for illustration, which is a fixed anchor for worked examples rather than a live tick you should trade against.

The gap widens when the underlying market is thin or moving fast, because the two prices are taken at different instants. Gold trades nearly around the clock, and between the New York close and the Asian open the order book is shallower, so quotes can jump several dollars in seconds. If our reference is a few minutes old and your platform is live, a 0.10-lot position can already show a different profit or loss than our example suggests. Treat every figure here as a teaching number, not an execution price.

Currency conversion adds a second layer for South African readers, since your account may be funded in rand while XAU/USD is priced in US dollars. The rand value of any gold position moves with the USD/ZAR rate as well as with gold itself, so a flat gold price can still produce a gain or loss in rand terms. Neither our reference price nor your broker's quote captures that conversion automatically; you have to read it from your own account balance.

The limits of our testing

We do not trade client money and we do not run a live account for every broker we write about, so our testing is documentary rather than a full operational trial. We read, we compare, and we say what we could not verify. A broker's execution quality, slippage in fast markets and the speed of a real withdrawal are things a reader will experience directly and we cannot fully reproduce from the outside.

Our checks are a snapshot with a date attached. A broker can change its entity, its funding routes or its leverage cap after we read the documents, and when that happens the page is re-checked rather than assumed correct. If you spot a figure that no longer matches the broker's own documents, the corrections page explains how to tell us.

How a broker fact is dated and re-checked

Every broker fact on the site carries the date it was last confirmed against the supplied broker information. That includes the platform list, the serving entity, the regulator caveat and the leverage cap. The date is the confirmation date, not the date the page was first written, so a reader can see how current the statement is. When a fact is re-confirmed without change, the date is moved forward; when it changes, the text is edited and the new date is recorded.

Re-checking happens on a fixed review cycle and whenever a reader or an editor flags a possible discrepancy. The check is a comparison against the broker information we hold, not a guess from marketing pages. If the broker information itself has not been updated, the page keeps the last confirmed wording and the last confirmed date rather than inventing a newer one. This is deliberate: a stale but accurate date is more honest than a fresh date attached to unverified text.

The regulator caveat is re-checked with particular care because it names specific licences. The wording we publish is the exact caveat supplied: FxPro is licensed by the FCA in the UK and by CySEC, and an FxPro entity holds an FSCA licence in South Africa, with readers told to check which entity their own account is opened with. We do not shorten it, widen it or attach it to a different entity. Any future change to that wording would be treated as a substantive edit and dated accordingly.

Where each class of figure on Karoo Picks comes from

The figures on this site fall into three classes, and each has a named source. Instrument specifications such as 1 lot = 100 oz of gold and a pip of 0.01 come from the contract specification for XAU/USD. Margin examples are calculated from the leverage cap supplied for South African accounts, using the reference price of about 4275.0. Broker facts such as the FxPro platforms MT4, MT5, cTrader and FxPro Edge, and the entity FxPro Markets Direct Costa Rica Latam SRL, come from the broker information supplied to us rather than from third-party directories.

Costs are never published as a single number because no spread, commission, swap or minimum deposit figure was supplied to us. Instead, each cost is described by what it consists of and what it depends on: the spread quoted by the broker at the moment of the trade, any commission attached to the account type, and overnight financing that depends on the instrument and the direction of the position. Rand amounts shown to South African readers are converted from US-dollar figures at a rate recorded on the day of calculation, and the conversion is labelled as indicative.

Regulatory statements come from the exact caveat supplied: FxPro is licensed by the FCA in the UK and by CySEC, and an FxPro entity holds an FSCA licence in South Africa. We do not extend that statement to cover any other licence or jurisdiction, and we do not present the FSCA licence as covering every account. Readers are told to check which entity their own account is opened with, because the entity determines the applicable protections and funding arrangements.

The formula behind each calculator, written out in words

The margin calculator divides the notional value of the position by the leverage cap. Notional value is the number of lots multiplied by 100 oz and then multiplied by the gold price in US dollars. For example, 0.10 lots at a reference price of 4275.0 gives a notional of 0.10 x 100 x 4275.0, which equals 42,750 US dollars. Dividing that by the retail cap of 1:200 gives about 85.50 US dollars of margin, the worked figure we publish. The result is a requirement, not a recommendation to use the full cap.

The pip-value calculator multiplies the pip size by the contract size and by the number of lots. For XAU/USD the pip is 0.01, so one pip on one standard lot is 0.01 x 100 oz, which equals 1 US dollar per pip. A 0.10-lot position therefore moves 0.10 US dollars per pip. A rand conversion is then applied using the recorded exchange rate, and the output is labelled indicative because the rate moves. No spread, commission or swap is folded into this figure, since those are quoted separately by the broker.

The position-size calculator works backwards from a risk amount. It takes the rand risk the reader is willing to accept, converts it to US dollars at the recorded rate, and divides by the distance in pips between entry and stop. That gives the loss per pip the position can carry. Dividing that figure by the value of one pip per lot gives the lot size. Every step is shown so the reader can substitute their own inputs, and the output is a maximum size for the stated risk, not a target.

What updates automatically and what a person reviews by hand

The reference gold price and the rand exchange rate used in worked examples are refreshed automatically on a schedule, and each display carries the time it was captured. The arithmetic itself is not automatic in the sense of being unchecked: the formulas are fixed in the page, so a refreshed input flows through the same calculation every time. Automatic refresh keeps the illustration current; it does not make the output a live quote, and the page says so next to the figure.

Broker facts are reviewed by hand. Platform names, the serving entity, the regulator caveat and the leverage cap are checked against the supplied broker information before publication and again at each scheduled review. They are not scraped or inferred, because a wrong entity name or a wrong licence statement is a serious error for a South African reader. Any change to those facts requires an editor to update the page and record the date, rather than waiting for an automated feed to catch up.

Costs are handled by hand for a different reason: we were not given spread, commission, swap or minimum deposit numbers, so there is nothing to refresh automatically. The pages describe what each cost consists of and what it depends on. If a reader sees a broker advertising a specific figure, that figure is the broker's and is dated to the moment it was shown, not to our page. This division is stated so readers know which parts of the site move on their own and which are editorially held.

Where the numbers come from

Every number on this site comes from the broker's own published documents, and we record the date we read them. That includes the contract specifications, the leverage and margin tables, the funding pages and the legal documents that name the entity. If a figure is not in those documents, it does not appear on Karoo Picks as a number.

Where a cost is real but we were not given a figure for it, we describe what it consists of and what it depends on instead of guessing. A spread on gold depends on the account type and on market conditions at the moment of the trade; a swap depends on the direction of the position and on the broker's published rates. We would rather leave a number out than print one we cannot point to in a document.

The known limits of this method

The method cannot tell you what a trade will cost, because no spread, commission, swap or minimum deposit figure was supplied. It can tell you the structure of the cost and the inputs that drive it, but the actual number is quoted by the broker at the moment of execution and varies with market conditions, account type and instrument. A reader who needs a precise cost must read it from the trading platform before dealing, not from an explanatory page.

The worked margin figure is an illustration at one leverage cap and one reference price. At 1:200, a 0.10-lot gold position needs about 85.50 US dollars of margin at a price of about 4275.0; change the price or the cap and the requirement changes proportionally. The cap is a maximum, not a setting to aim at, and using the full cap leaves very little room for adverse movement. The method also does not model gaps, slippage or weekend risk, which can move a position past the planned stop.

Rand amounts are indicative because they depend on an exchange rate recorded on a particular day. The site does not predict the rate, and a conversion shown today may differ from the rate applied by the bank or payment provider when funds are moved. Local funding by card, bank transfer in ZAR or e-wallet carries its own timing and charges set by the provider, which the method does not estimate. These limits are stated so no reader treats an illustration as a quote or a guarantee.

How you can rebuild any figure on Karoo Picks yourself

Every number on this site can be reconstructed with the instrument facts we publish, a calculator and your broker's own contract specifications. For gold, the fixed inputs are that one standard lot is 100 oz and one pip is 0.01. To check a pip value, multiply 0.01 by 100 oz to get $1 per pip per standard lot, then scale for your position size: a 0.10-lot trade moves $0.10 per pip. Nothing hidden sits behind that arithmetic, and you can repeat it on paper before opening a position.

Margin figures follow the same open logic. Take the notional value of the position, which is the gold price multiplied by 100 oz multiplied by your lot size, and divide it by the leverage on your account. At the retail cap of up to 1:200, a 0.10-lot gold position at the reference price needs about $85.50 margin. If your account sits with an entity offering up to 1:500 for eligible or professional clients, the required margin is smaller, but that is a cap, not a target to aim at.

To reproduce a rand figure, apply the USD/ZAR rate your own bank or platform shows at the time you check, because we do not publish a conversion rate. Funding side checks are simpler: confirm which entity your account is opened with, since FxPro is licensed by the FCA (UK) and CySEC, and an FxPro entity holds an FSCA licence in South Africa. Then compare your own platform's contract specification screen against our stated inputs.

What happens when two sources disagree

When two sources disagree, the site prefers the source closest to the account the reader will actually use. For entity and licensing facts, the supplied broker information and the exact regulator caveat take precedence over directory listings or forum posts. For instrument specifications, the contract specification for XAU/USD governs, which is why 1 lot is treated as 100 oz and a pip as 0.01 throughout. A disagreement is not averaged or blended; one source is chosen and the choice is stated.

Where the disagreement concerns a cost, the site does not pick a winner between two numbers, because no cost number was supplied to us in the first place. It describes the cost by its components and says that the figure depends on the broker's quote at execution, the account type and the instrument. If a reader presents a broker screenshot showing a specific spread, that screenshot is treated as the broker's statement at that moment, not as a fact about the instrument in general.

Unresolved disagreements are handled by narrowing the claim rather than by asserting one side. If the platform list or the serving entity cannot be confirmed, the page states only what is confirmed and flags the rest for review. Readers are told to verify the entity name on their own account agreement, because that document, not a website, determines which licence and protections apply. This approach keeps the site accurate when sources conflict, at the cost of saying less than a less careful page might.