How Brokers Are Checked

The first test: can a Philippine resident actually use it

The first check is whether a resident of the Philippines can open an account, fund it and withdraw from it. A broker that fails any of those three steps is not ranked, however good its platform looks on paper.

Funding is checked against the rails readers here actually use, GCash and bank transfer, and withdrawal is checked as a separate step because money going in easily does not prove money comes out easily. The currency of the account and the peso conversion are noted where the broker documents them.

The honest limits of the testing

The testing has limits and they are stated plainly: the desk reads documents and checks access, it does not trade a live account over months for every broker, and conditions can change after the date a page was read. A figure is a snapshot, not a promise.

Costs such as spreads, commissions and swaps are described by what they consist of and what they depend on, not as fixed numbers, because they move with the market and the account type. Readers should verify every figure with the broker before acting.

How a reader can reproduce any number published here

Any number on this site can be reproduced with the instrument specification and a calculator. For gold, one standard lot is 100 ounces and one pip is 0.01. To check a pip value, multiply 0.01 by the number of ounces in the position. A 0.10-lot position is 10 ounces, so the pip value is $0.10. To check a notional value, multiply the ounces by the reference price of 4275.0. A 0.10-lot position gives a notional of $42,750. Both steps use only the figures printed on the page.

To check the margin example, divide the notional by the leverage cap that applies to the entity serving the Philippines. At the applicable cap, the $42,750 notional on a 0.10-lot gold position requires about $85.50 margin. A reader who wants to check a different lot size repeats the same two steps with a different ounce count: ounces times price for the notional, notional divided by the cap for the margin. The cap itself is not restated as a number here; it is the ceiling published by the serving entity, and the division is the only operation the reader needs.

To check a broker fact, open the broker's own published page and compare the wording with the sentence on this site, then note the check date shown alongside it. The regulator caveat can be verified the same way: FxPro is licensed by the FCA (UK) and CySEC, not by the SEC of the Philippines. If your check disagrees with the page, the source of authority is the broker's document, and the site's review process treats a reader report as a trigger to re-check. Every number here is either an instrument fact, a broker document fact or arithmetic between them, and each of those can be traced by hand.

Where the numbers come from

Numbers come from the broker's own documents, and each one is recorded with the date it was read. That includes the entity serving the Philippines, the instruments offered, the platform list and the leverage cap that applies to this country.

The leverage figure is treated as a cap, not a setting to aim at. As a worked reference, at the applicable cap a 0.10-lot gold position needs about $85.50 margin, with 1 standard lot equal to 100 oz and one pip equal to 0.01.

Why the live gold price on your screen can differ from a broker quote

The live gold price you see on a chart and the quote your broker fills you at are two different things, and the gap is normal. A reference price such as 4275.0 is an anchor used for arithmetic on this site, not a promise of the price you will get. A broker's quote reflects its own liquidity, the account type and the moment of execution, and it moves continuously. The difference between the two is not an error in either; it is the distance between a reference and a tradeable price.

The gap widens around news, at market open and close, and during thin liquidity, because the broker's quote includes the cost of providing liquidity at that moment. That cost is part of the spread, and the spread is not printed as a number on this site because it depends on the account and the conditions. A reader comparing a reference price with a broker quote should expect them to differ and should treat the broker's platform as the authority for the price at which an order can actually be filled.

The margin example on this site is tied to the reference price, so it moves when the reference moves and it will not match a margin figure calculated from a broker quote at a different price. At the applicable cap, a 0.10-lot gold position needs about $85.50 margin at the reference price of 4275.0. If your broker's quote is different, your required margin will be different by the same proportion. That is why the site presents the figure as a worked example of the arithmetic rather than a fixed deposit amount.

How a broker fact is dated and re-checked before it stays on the page

Every broker fact carries the date it was last checked against the broker's own published page. The check is recorded when the reviewer reads the source, not when the page is edited, so the date reflects the state of the broker's document rather than the site's publishing schedule. The facts held this way include the licence statement, the entity that serves the Philippines, the platform list and the funding methods. A fact without a check date is treated as unverified and is not presented as current.

Re-checking is triggered by three events: a scheduled review, a visible change on the broker's source page, and a reader report of a discrepancy. The scheduled review is the baseline; the other two are early warnings. When a re-check happens, the reviewer compares the site's wording with the broker's wording line by line, because a small change such as an entity name or a licence qualifier alters the legal meaning even when the rest of the sentence looks the same. The caveat that FxPro is licensed by the FCA and CySEC, not by the SEC of the Philippines, is re-checked as a single exact string.

A fact that fails re-check is removed or rewritten before the next publication. The site does not keep a stale figure live with a note that it may be out of date, because a reader in the Philippines acting on a stale entity or licence line could be misled about who holds their account. If the broker's page is unreachable at review time, the fact is marked as unconfirmed and the page says what the figure depends on rather than repeating the old wording. The date is the audit trail; the wording is what the reader relies on.

How each class of number on this site is sourced

Every figure on this site comes from one of three places: the instrument specification for gold (XAU/USD), the broker's published legal and product documents, or the arithmetic those two inputs produce. The contract size of 100 ounces per standard lot, the 0.01 pip value and the reference price of 4275.0 are instrument facts. The leverage cap is set by the FxPro entity that serves the Philippines. Account costs and deposit thresholds are not published as numbers here because they depend on the account type and the entity. No figure is estimated, rounded from a competitor, or carried over from another country's rules.

Funding-related figures are sourced from the rails a Philippine reader actually uses: GCash and bank transfer. The site does not quote a peso deposit amount, a transfer fee, or a processing time as a fixed number, because those depend on the sending bank, the GCash wallet tier and the receiving entity's cut-off. What is stated is the method and the fact that the broker's own cashier page is the authority for the current minimum. The margin example of about $85.50 for a 0.10-lot gold position is arithmetic, not a broker quote: it is the applicable cap applied to 10 ounces at the reference price.

Regulatory statements are sourced from the licence list published by the broker and from the named regulators. The caveat printed across this site is exact: FxPro is licensed by the FCA (UK) and CySEC, not by the SEC of the Philippines. That sentence is not a summary; it is the source statement, and it appears unchanged wherever the regulator is mentioned. Where a number cannot be traced to the instrument spec, the broker's documents or the arithmetic between them, the page says what the figure depends on instead of printing a number, so a reader can see the boundary between sourced fact and variable cost.

What updates automatically and what a person reviews before it goes live

The reference price and the derived arithmetic update automatically. The gold reference price of 4275.0 is the anchor, and every figure that is computed from it, such as the notional value of a given lot size and the margin example, recalculates when the anchor is refreshed. The pip size of 0.01 and the contract size of 100 ounces are fixed instrument facts and do not change with the price. The leverage cap is not auto-updated from a live feed; it is held as a rule tied to the entity serving the Philippines and changes only when that entity's published terms change.

Broker facts are reviewed by hand. The licence statement, the platform list (MT4, MT5, cTrader and the FxPro app), the funding methods (GCash and bank transfer) and the regulator caveat are checked against the broker's own pages before they are published or amended. A person reads the source page, confirms the wording, and records the date of the check. The site does not scrape a broker page and publish the result unread, because a licence line or an entity name is a legal statement and a machine copy can strip the qualifier that makes it accurate.

Cost figures that are not given as numbers are described by what they consist of and what they depend on, and that description is reviewed by hand whenever the broker's cost schedule is revised. No spread, commission, swap or minimum deposit is printed as a number on this site, so there is no auto-updating cost table to drift out of date. The only numbers that move on their own are those tied to the reference price. Everything that carries a legal or cost consequence is held until a reviewer has seen the source.

What the site does when two sources disagree

When two sources disagree, the site follows the hierarchy of authority: the instrument specification wins on contract size and pip size, the broker's own legal and product documents win on entity, licence and platform facts, and the arithmetic between them wins on derived figures. A third-party comparison site, a forum post or a social media screenshot is never used to override the broker's document. If the broker's own pages conflict with each other, the more specific and more recently dated page is taken as the current statement, and the conflict is recorded.

A disagreement is not smoothed over by printing an average or a range. If one source says a cost is structured one way and another says it is structured another way, the site describes the structure and says that the exact figure depends on the account type and the entity, rather than inventing a number to fill the gap. This is why no spread, commission, swap or minimum deposit is printed as a number on this site: those are precisely the figures where sources most often diverge, and a printed number would hide the divergence instead of showing it.

When the disagreement touches the regulator statement, the exact caveat is repeated and the conflict is escalated for review before publication. The line that FxPro is licensed by the FCA (UK) and CySEC, not by the SEC of the Philippines, is not softened to accommodate a conflicting claim. If a source suggests a Philippine licence that the broker's own documents do not support, the site does not adopt it. The reader is told what the broker's documents say and what the caveat is, and the check date shows when that was last confirmed.

The arithmetic behind every calculator on the site, in words

The pip-value calculator multiplies three things: the pip size for gold, the number of ounces in the position, and the price conversion into the account currency. For XAU/USD the pip is 0.01, and one standard lot is 100 ounces, so a 1.00-lot position moves $1.00 for every 0.01 move in the quoted price. A 0.10-lot position moves $0.10 per pip. The calculator does not apply a spread, a commission or a swap; those are costs layered on top by the broker and are shown separately on the cost pages, not folded into the pip value.

The margin calculator divides the notional value of the position by the leverage cap that applies to the entity serving the Philippines. Notional value is the number of ounces multiplied by the reference price. The worked example on the site uses a 0.10-lot gold position at the reference price of 4275.0, which gives a notional of $42,750, and at the applicable cap that requires about $85.50 margin. The calculator never presents the cap as a target or a recommendation; it is the ceiling the entity enforces, and a reader who chooses a smaller position simply divides by the same cap on a smaller notional.

The position-size calculator runs the margin arithmetic backwards. A reader enters the margin they are willing to commit and the calculator returns the largest lot size that margin supports at the applicable cap, using the same reference price. The result is a ceiling, not a suggestion: it tells you the biggest position the margin allows, not the position a risk plan should take. No calculator on the site adds a stop-loss distance, a risk percentage or an expected return, because those inputs belong to the reader's own plan, and printing a default would imply a recommendation the site is not making.

What is deliberately left unpublished and the reason for each omission

The site does not publish a spread, a commission, a swap or a minimum deposit as a number. Those figures are set by the broker, vary by account type and entity, and change with market conditions, so a printed number would be stale or misleading within days. Instead the site says what each cost consists of and what it depends on, and points the reader to the broker's own contract specifications and cashier page for the current figure. That is a deliberate limit, not an oversight.

The site does not publish any leverage ratio other than the cap that applies to the entity serving the Philippines, and it does not present that cap as a setting to aim at. Quoting a second ratio from another jurisdiction would invite a Philippine reader to expect terms the serving entity does not offer. The cap is stated as a ceiling, and the only worked figure given is the margin example of about $85.50 for a 0.10-lot gold position at the reference price. No other ratio appears anywhere on the site.

The site does not publish an author name, a performance record, a bonus or a promotional date, because none of those were provided as verified facts and inventing them would breach the standard the rest of the page follows. It also does not publish a funding method beyond GCash and bank transfer, because naming a rail the broker does not support for this audience would be inaccurate. What is left out is left out because it cannot be sourced, and the page says so rather than filling the space with an estimate.

The known limits of this method

The method cannot tell you what a trade will cost at the moment you place it. It states what a cost consists of and what it depends on, but the actual spread, commission and swap are set by the broker and vary with the account type, the time of day and market conditions. A reader who wants the live cost must read the broker's own platform or contract specifications. The site is a toolkit for understanding the structure of the cost, not a quote engine, and it does not pretend otherwise.

The leverage example is a single worked figure at a single reference price. At the applicable cap, a 0.10-lot gold position needs about $85.50 margin at a reference price of 4275.0. If the price moves, the notional moves and the margin requirement moves with it, so the $85.50 is an illustration of the arithmetic, not a fixed deposit. The site does not print any other leverage ratio, because the cap is a property of the entity serving the country, and quoting a second ratio from another jurisdiction would mislead a Philippine reader.

The regulator statement is deliberately narrow. It says FxPro is licensed by the FCA (UK) and CySEC, not by the SEC of the Philippines, and it does not go further into what that means for dispute resolution or compensation. That is a limit of the method: the site reports the licence fact and the caveat, and leaves the legal consequences to the reader and, where needed, to professional advice. The method also cannot verify a reader's own suitability, tax position or risk tolerance, and it does not try to.