About Vaal Rules

Who runs this desk

Vaal Rules is run by a small editorial desk that writes about gold (XAU/USD) trading for readers in South Africa. The desk is not a broker, not a bank and not a licensed financial adviser, and nothing here should be read as personal advice. We do not hold client money, we do not open accounts and we cannot place or close a trade for anyone.

The work is research and explanation: how gold contracts are sized, how margin and leverage work at the ratios available to South African residents, and what a broker's own documents say before you fund an account. Where we name a broker such as FxPro, we are describing published material, not recommending that you open an account with it.

The editorial standard a number must meet before it is published

A number is published only if it can be traced to a source the desk can name or to a formula the reader can reproduce. For gold, the reproducible figures are the contract size — 1 standard lot equals 100 oz — and the pip definition of 0.01. The reference price near 4275.0 is labelled as a reference, not a live quote. The margin example of about $85.50 for a 0.10-lot position is shown with the leverage cap it depends on, so the reader sees the calculation rather than a bare figure.

Costs such as spreads, commissions and swaps are not published as numbers because the desk was not given a number to stand behind. Instead, the standard requires that we describe what the cost consists of and what it depends on — the instrument, the account type, the entity and the time of day. Saying a spread is competitive or tight is not allowed, because that is an unsupported claim. This is a deliberate limit: a number without a traceable source is worse than no number, especially on a high-risk instrument like XAU/USD.

The standard also governs how leverage is written. The only ratios the desk will state are the caps given for South Africa: up to 1:200 for retail and up to 1:500 for eligible or professional clients depending on the instrument. No other ratio is quoted anywhere on the site. Where the regulator is named, the exact sentence is used: 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. That sentence is never paraphrased.

How the site is funded and where that funding stops

The site is funded by the commercial side of the operation, and that funding pays for writing, review and maintenance. It does not buy a number, a ranking or a favourable sentence. The editorial standard above is applied before anything is published, so a piece that cannot meet it does not go out regardless of who funded the desk that month. Funding keeps the lights on; it does not set the facts.

Funding does not influence how we describe leverage, margin or risk. We still write that retail leverage is capped at up to 1:200 in South Africa, that up to 1:500 is available to eligible or professional clients depending on the instrument, and that this is a cap rather than a target. We still show the $85.50 margin figure for a 0.10-lot gold position at 1:200 with its inputs visible. No funding arrangement changes those statements, because they come from the fact set, not from a commercial brief.

What funding does influence is scope: which instruments and platforms we can afford to cover in detail. That is why gold (XAU/USD) on MT4, MT5, cTrader and FxPro Edge gets full treatment, with 1 lot = 100 oz and one pip = 0.01 stated on every relevant page. It does not influence the verdict on risk. Trading gold on leverage is high-risk and can lose more than you deposit; that sentence is written the same way whether the desk is funded well or thinly.

The regulator sentence we publish and why the entity matters

Every page that names the broker carries the same regulator caveat: FxPro is licensed by the FCA (UK) and CySEC, and an FxPro entity holds an FSCA licence in South Africa, so you should check which entity your own account is opened with. That sentence is published verbatim because the entity, not the brand, is what determines your protections. We do not shorten it to 'FSCA-regulated' and we do not imply that every South African client sits under the same licence.

The entity matters because the entity serving South Africa is FxPro Markets Direct Costa Rica Latam SRL, while the group also holds FCA and CySEC licences and an FSCA licence through an FxPro entity. Those are different legal homes with different rules. A reader who assumes the UK or Cyprus licence covers their account may be assuming something the paperwork does not say. The caveat is there so you check the account agreement rather than the homepage badge.

We apply the same discipline to leverage and funding as we do to the regulator sentence. The retail cap is up to 1:200, with up to 1:500 for eligible or professional clients depending on the instrument, and we do not state any other ratio. Local funding is by local cards, bank transfers in ZAR and e-wallets, and we do not name methods outside that list. If a detail is not in the fact set, the page says what it depends on and points you to the entity that holds your account.

How the site is funded and what that funding does and does not influence

The site is funded by its own editorial budget and does not take payment for coverage, ratings or placement. Funding comes from the desk’s operating budget, not from brokers or affiliates paying for a mention. That means no broker can buy a favourable description of its spreads, its leverage or its execution. Where a broker such as FxPro is named, it is because the facts — platforms MT4, MT5, cTrader and FxPro Edge, and the entity that serves South Africa, FxPro Markets Direct Costa Rica Latam SRL — are relevant to the explanation, not because of a commercial arrangement.

Funding does not influence the numbers we refuse to publish. The same rule that stops us quoting an unsourced spread also stops a funder from asking us to soften a risk warning. The desk’s funding has no line item for removing the regulator caveat or for hiding the fact that leverage is a cap, not a setting to aim at. If a topic needs a figure we do not have, the article says what the figure depends on instead. Money does not change that outcome.

What funding does influence is scope: it decides how much research time the desk can spend on a topic. It does not decide the conclusion. The desk can afford to check a margin calculation — such as the $85.50 margin on a 0.10-lot gold position at the stated leverage cap — but it cannot afford to invent a swap rate. Readers in South Africa should read every cost section with that in mind: the absence of a number is a statement about evidence, not about the broker’s pricing.

How to challenge something published here and what happens next

To challenge something, quote the exact sentence and the page it appears on, and say which fact you think it contradicts. Send that to the desk through the contact route on the site. A challenge that names the sentence and the fact is actionable; a general complaint that a page 'feels wrong' is not. We log the challenge against the page and the reviewer who signed it off, so the same error does not reappear in the next revision.

Every challenge gets checked against the same fact set the page was written from. If the page stated a number we were not given, or dropped the regulator caveat, or named a funding method outside local cards, bank transfers in ZAR and e-wallets, the page is corrected. If the challenge is about a live cost, we will not replace it with a number we do not have; we will make clearer what the cost depends on and where the live figure sits. Corrections are made to the page itself, not buried in a comment.

If you believe a page has misstated leverage, that is the highest-priority challenge we handle. The only ratios we publish are up to 1:200 for retail and up to 1:500 for eligible or professional clients depending on the instrument, with the cap framed as a ceiling. A page that says otherwise is wrong and will be fixed. The same applies to the $85.50 margin example for a 0.10-lot gold position at 1:200: if the inputs are missing or the arithmetic is off, tell us and we will correct it.

What the desk will not do

The desk will not manage money, will not advise on whether to buy or sell gold, and will not help recover funds from a broker. Those are tasks for a licensed adviser or the relevant regulator, and we are neither. Questions about a specific account, a withdrawal or a disputed charge belong with the broker first.

We also do not publish guest posts, sponsored reviews or paid placement at any price, and we do not claim to be licensed or regulated. The one regulatory fact we rely on is the broker's own: FxPro is licensed by the FCA (UK) and CySEC, and an FxPro entity holds an FSCA licence in South Africa, so check which entity your own account is opened with.

How Vaal Rules is run and how trading decisions get made

Vaal Rules is run as a single-desk operation with no trading signals, no managed accounts and no execution on behalf of readers. The desk is a research and education desk, not a broker or portfolio manager. Decisions about what gets published are made by the writer on duty, who must be able to show the source of every number before it goes live. No one at the desk places trades for readers or holds client funds, so there is no conflict between what we publish and a position we hold.

Trading decisions described on this site are examples of process, not instructions to follow. When we explain a gold position on XAU/USD, we state the lot size and the margin that follows from it — for instance, a 0.10-lot position needs about $85.50 margin at the leverage cap in South Africa — so the reader can see the arithmetic. We do not tell anyone to buy or sell. The desk’s job is to make the mechanics visible: pip value, contract size of 100 oz per standard lot, and how leverage is a cap rather than a target.

The desk operates on a fixed review cycle and a written checklist. Every article is checked against three questions before publication: is the number traceable, is the risk stated, and is the regulator caveat present where leverage or entity is discussed. The editorial angle is an honest trading toolkit, so the desk prioritises precision over volume. If a topic cannot be covered without inventing a figure, it is left out. That is why you will see costs described by what they consist of and what they depend on, never as a made-up number.

How the desk is paid

Affiliate links are the only revenue this desk has. If a reader follows a link to a broker and opens an account, the broker may pay the desk a referral fee. That payment never buys a rating, never moves a broker up a table and never hides a weakness we have found.

Because the fee comes from the broker side, we state it plainly on every page where a link appears. If a broker's terms change, or a check fails, the page says so even when that broker is the one paying. A reader who never clicks a link still gets the same content.

How this desk is run and how trading decisions get made

This desk is run by a small editorial team that writes every piece to a fixed checklist before publication. No single writer has the final word on a gold (XAU/USD) article: a second reviewer checks the numbers, the leverage caveats and the regulator sentence against the source facts. Decisions about what we cover and how we frame it come from that review, not from a marketing calendar. The result is a page set that reads the same whether you land on a margin explainer or a platform comparison.

Decisions about which topics get written are made against reader questions, not against what a broker wants promoted. If the most common question is how margin works on a 0.10-lot gold position at 1:200, that gets a page before any product feature does. Each piece is tied to a concrete trading mechanic: 1 standard lot of gold equals 100 oz, one pip equals 0.01, and the reference price we use is about 4275.0. Anything that cannot be tied to a mechanic we can explain is left off the site.

The desk makes a clear split between explaining an instrument and recommending a broker. We explain what a cost consists of and what it depends on, and we do not rank platforms by a spread number we were not given. For South African readers, that means we say plainly that costs depend on the account type, the entity your account is opened with and market conditions at the time. The editorial decision is to describe the mechanics accurately and leave the choice, and the risk, with the reader.

What we will not publish even when a reader asks for it

We will not publish a spread, commission, swap or minimum deposit as a number, because we were not given one and a made-up figure is worse than no figure. When a reader asks 'what does it cost to trade gold here', the honest answer is that the cost consists of the spread, any commission and any swap, and that each depends on the account type, the entity and conditions at the time. We name the components and send you to the broker's live schedule for the figure.

We will not publish a leverage ratio other than the ones in the fact set. Retail leverage in South Africa is capped at up to 1:200, and up to 1:500 is available to eligible or professional clients depending on the instrument. We will not write '1:1000' or 'unlimited' or any other figure to make a page look more exciting, and we will not present the cap as a recommended setting. The worked margin figure we do publish is about $85.50 for a 0.10-lot gold position at 1:200.

We will not publish a guarantee, a profit claim or a 'get rich' framing, and we will not name a funding method outside local cards, bank transfers in ZAR and e-wallets. We also will not drop the regulator caveat to make a page shorter. If you see a page on this site missing that caveat or stating a cost as a hard number, treat it as an error and tell us, because it means the review step failed.

The editorial standard a number has to meet before it is published

Every number on this site has to come from a fact we were given, or it is described as something that depends on conditions rather than stated as a figure. That is the whole standard: if the figure is not in the source set, it does not appear as a number. A margin example can be published because we were given one: a 0.10-lot gold position needs about $85.50 margin at 1:200 retail leverage. A spread, commission, swap or minimum deposit cannot be published as a number because we were not given one.

The standard applies to leverage in a strict way. We state that retail leverage in South Africa is capped at up to 1:200, and up to 1:500 for eligible or professional clients depending on the instrument. We do not state any other ratio, and we treat the cap as a ceiling, not a setting to aim at. A number that is a cap is written as a cap; a number that is an example is written with its inputs shown, so a reader can see the 0.10-lot, 100 oz and $85.50 behind it.

Where a cost is real but variable, the standard is to name what it consists of and what it depends on instead of inventing a figure. For gold (XAU/USD), we say the cost depends on the account type, the entity your account is held with and conditions at the time of the trade, and we point you to the broker's own schedule for the live number. For South African readers we keep rand amounts and local funding in view, but we do not convert a variable cost into a rand figure we were not given.