How We Check a Broker

The first test: can you actually use it

The first thing checked is whether a resident of Uganda can open an account, fund it and withdraw from it. A broker that cannot take a Ugandan client, or that cannot pay one back, is not ranked at all, whatever else it offers on gold (XAU/USD).

In practice that means looking at whether Mobile Money is an accepted funding route, what the broker's own documents say about withdrawals, and whether the entity serving this country is stated clearly. Everything else is secondary to that chain working end to end.

What this site chooses not to publish

This site does not publish a spread, a commission, a swap rate or a minimum deposit as a number, because no such figures were supplied to it. Publishing an estimate would be worse than publishing nothing, since a reader could plan around a cost that was never real. Instead the site describes what each cost consists of and what it depends on, and points you to the broker's own platform for the figure that will actually apply to your account.

It also does not publish a leverage ratio beyond the cap that applies to the entity serving Uganda, and it does not present that cap as a setting to aim at. No alternative ratio is quoted, because quoting one would invite readers to treat it as available when it is not. The worked margin figure of about $85.50 for a 0.10-lot gold position exists to show the arithmetic at the applicable cap, nothing more.

Names, dates, promotions, bonuses and performance statistics are absent by design. The site carries no author byline and no claim of returns, because neither would be grounded in anything it can verify. What remains is mechanics, formulas and sourced broker facts, each with a stated boundary. Where a reader wants something the site withholds, the honest answer is that the number depends on your broker, your entity and the market at the moment you trade.

Why the live price and your broker quote will not match

The live price on this site and the quote on your broker's platform come from different liquidity sources, so they will differ by some amount at any given moment. Gold is quoted continuously across venues, and each venue aggregates its own streams. Neither price is wrong; they are two readings of a fast-moving market taken at slightly different instants. The gap widens during news releases and thin liquidity, which is exactly when you are most likely to be comparing them.

Your broker's quote is also the only one that can be executed against. A price shown here is informational and cannot be traded, so a difference between the two is not a discrepancy you can capture. If you place an order expecting the price you saw on this page, you are placing it against a book you cannot see. The number that fills your order is the one on your platform at the moment of execution, after any cost the broker applies.

Timing adds a second layer. Pages load, feeds lag and screens refresh at different intervals, so a price you read here is always at least slightly behind. For gold, where a pip is 0.01 and a standard lot is 100 oz, small price differences translate into real money on a live position. Use the site's price to understand scale and mechanics, and use your platform's quote to decide anything you actually intend to trade.

Reproducing any number on this site yourself

You can reproduce the margin figure with three inputs: the lot size, the contract size of 100 oz per standard lot, and the XAU/USD price. Multiply lots by 100 by price to get notional value, then divide by the leverage cap that applies to the entity serving Uganda. At the applicable cap, 0.10 lots at the reference price of about 4275.0 gives the published figure of about $85.50. Change any input and the output changes with it.

You can reproduce the pip value the same way. Multiply the pip size of 0.01 by 100 oz to get the dollar value of one pip for a full lot, then scale by your lot size. For a 0.10-lot position, the arithmetic is visible and checkable on any calculator. For position sizing, divide your chosen risk in dollars by your stop distance in pips, then divide by the per-pip value of one lot; the result is the lot size that matches your plan.

To reproduce a broker fact, go to the broker's own documentation for the entity serving Uganda and read the platform list, the funding route and the leverage cap directly. Then confirm the licence on the CMA Uganda licensed persons list, as the caveat instructs. If what you find differs from what is published here, the broker's current documentation is the newer source and should be trusted over this page until the page is re-checked.

What updates on its own and what a person checks

The XAU/USD price feed updates automatically, and every figure derived from it, including the margin example and pip values, recalculates from the current feed rather than a stored number. That is the only class of figure on the site that moves without human involvement. The reference price of about 4275.0 is a fixed anchor for worked examples, so it is deliberately not wired to the feed and will not move when the market does.

Broker facts are reviewed by hand. Platform availability, the mobile money funding route, the leverage cap for the entity serving Uganda and the regulatory wording are read from the broker's own documentation and confirmed before they are published or changed. A person checks them because a broker can change its entity structure or its published terms without announcing it, and an automated scrape would not tell you whether the change is real or a page error.

Anything that depends on the reader, such as lot size, risk amount and stop distance, is never refreshed automatically because it is not ours to update. Those inputs sit with you. The practical consequence is that the live price on a page can be seconds old while a broker fact beside it may be days or weeks old, and the two have different refresh rules by design. Neither is presented as real-time execution data.

The wording behind each calculator on this site

The margin calculator divides the notional value of the position by the leverage cap that applies to the entity serving Uganda. Notional value is the number of lots multiplied by 100 oz and then by the current XAU/USD price. The result is the margin requirement in US dollars, and it is a floor for holding the position open, not a limit on what the position can lose. The worked figure of about $85.50 for a 0.10-lot position at the applicable cap is produced by exactly this chain.

The pip value calculator multiplies the pip size of 0.01 by the contract size of 100 oz, which gives the dollar value of one pip for a full standard lot, then scales that down by the lot size you enter. For gold quoted in dollars, no further currency conversion is applied to the pip value itself. What the calculator does not do is net off any cost charged by the broker, because no cost figure was provided to us to net off.

The position size calculator works backwards from the amount you are willing to risk. It takes your risk amount in dollars, divides it by the distance in pips between your entry and your stop, and divides again by the per-pip value of one lot. The output is a lot size. The distance in pips is your input, not ours, and the risk amount is your decision. The calculator assumes the stop is filled at the level you set, which is an assumption the market does not always honour.

How a broker fact gets a date and a re-check

Each broker fact is tied to the moment it was read from the broker's own documentation, and it is re-checked against that same source before any page is republished. The re-check is a comparison, not an assumption: the published platform list, the funding route, the leverage cap for the entity serving Uganda and the regulatory sentence are each confirmed line by line. If a source page has moved or been rewritten, the fact is treated as unconfirmed until it is found again.

Facts that touch regulation get the strictest treatment, because the caveat itself is fixed wording: FxPro is licensed by the FCA (UK), CySEC and FSCA, and any broker should be confirmed on the CMA Uganda licensed persons list. That sentence is reproduced as given rather than paraphrased, so a re-check means confirming it still matches. A change in licensing or entity structure is the single most consequential thing that can happen to a broker fact on this site.

A dated fact is never presented as permanent. Where a figure could change without notice, such as the leverage cap that applies to the entity serving this country, the page describes it as the cap in force for that entity rather than as a fixed property of gold trading. The date of the last check is the honest boundary of what the site can claim, and anything after that date is your responsibility to confirm with the broker directly.

Where each class of figure on this site comes from

Market figures on this site come from a single live price feed for XAU/USD, and instrument mechanics are fixed, published specifications rather than estimates. The pip size of 0.01 and the contract size of 100 oz per standard lot are contract terms, not measurements, so they do not drift with the market. The reference price of about 4275.0 is a snapshot used to make worked examples readable, and every margin figure shown is calculated from that snapshot rather than copied from a broker screen.

Broker facts come from the broker's own published documentation for the entity that serves Uganda, and the regulatory line is stated exactly as given: FxPro is licensed by the FCA (UK), CySEC and FSCA, and any broker should be confirmed on the CMA Uganda licensed persons list. Platform names, the mobile money funding route and the leverage cap are all taken from that same broker-level source. Nothing about costs is published as a figure because no cost figure was supplied to us.

Shilling amounts shown alongside dollar figures are conversions for familiarity only. They are derived from the dollar value at the exchange rate in effect when the page was assembled, which means a USh figure on this site is an illustration of scale, not a quote you can transact at. Your mobile money provider sets its own rate at the moment of funding, and that rate is the one that governs what actually leaves your wallet. Treat every USh number here as orientation, never as settlement.

When two sources give different answers

When two sources disagree, the broker's own documentation for the entity serving Uganda wins over any third-party summary, directory or comparison site. A regulator's public register wins over the broker's marketing page on the question of licensing, which is why the caveat points you to the CMA Uganda licensed persons list rather than asking you to take the licence claim on trust. The hierarchy is source authority first, then recency.

If the broker's own pages contradict each other, for example a platform listed in one place and omitted in another, the fact is held back rather than published with a guess. A missing platform name is a smaller problem than a wrong one, because a reader who cannot find MT5 or cTrader on the entity's documentation will discover the gap immediately. Where a conflict cannot be resolved from primary sources, the page states what the fact depends on instead of asserting a value.

Price conflicts are handled differently from broker-fact conflicts. A live feed and a broker quote will rarely match to the last decimal, and that is expected rather than an error to be reconciled. The site does not attempt to arbitrate between them or to declare one correct. It uses its own feed consistently for worked examples and tells you plainly that your broker's quote is the one that governs your order.

The method's known blind spots

The method cannot tell you what a trade will cost you, because no spread, commission, swap or minimum deposit figure was supplied. Every cost statement on this site is therefore limited to describing what a cost consists of and what it depends on, such as the entity serving you and market conditions at the moment of execution. If you need an actual cost number, it has to come from the broker's own platform, not from this site.

The method also cannot verify execution quality. Slippage, requotes, rejection of orders and gaps through a stop are real behaviours in fast gold markets, and none of them can be measured from published documentation. The position size calculator assumes your stop is filled at your level; the market does not guarantee that. A risk figure produced here is a plan, and the realised loss on a gap can exceed it.

Finally, the method treats the leverage cap as a cap, not a target. It does not model margin calls, stop-outs or the sequence in which positions are closed when equity falls. It also does not model funding friction on mobile money, such as provider limits or processing time, which can affect when your account is actually credited. Those are live-account realities that sit outside anything a published figure can capture.

The limits of our testing

We do not run live money through every broker and we cannot see how a withdrawal feels on a bad week. Our checks are documentary: what the broker publishes, read on a stated date, plus the practical question of whether a Ugandan resident is served at all.

That leaves real gaps, and we would rather name them than paper over them. Costs and conditions change without notice, so a figure dated here must be verified with the broker before you rely on it, and the regulator caveat stands: FxPro is licensed by the FCA (UK), CySEC and FSCA; confirm any broker on the CMA Uganda licensed persons list.

Where the numbers come from

Every figure on this site comes from the broker's own published documents, and we record the date we read them. That includes costs, the platform list such as MT4, MT5, cTrader and the FxPro app, and the leverage cap that applies to the entity serving Uganda.

We do not estimate a number we were not given. Where a cost depends on account type, instrument or market conditions, the page says what it consists of and what it depends on rather than inventing a figure. A worked margin example, such as about $85.50 for a 0.10-lot gold position at the applicable cap, is labelled as an illustration, not a promise.