About Karoo Picks

Who runs this desk

Karoo Picks is run by a small editorial desk of writers who follow gold (XAU/USD) markets and the practical mechanics of trading them from South Africa. We keep the operation deliberately small so that every page can be checked by the same people who write it. We do not publish a staff count, a founding year or an office address, because those details change and we would rather leave them out than get them wrong.

Every page on this site is written in plain English for a South African reader: rand amounts, local funding methods such as cards, bank transfers in ZAR and e-wallets, and the FSCA as the familiar local regulator. We do not write for a generic global audience and then translate; the local context is the starting point.

Where the money behind Karoo Picks comes from and where it stops

Karoo Picks is funded by commercial arrangements with brokers, and those arrangements buy placement, never conclusions. A partner can appear in a comparison table or a linked account section; a partner cannot have a paragraph edited, a risk warning shortened, or a cost described in words we would not use for any other firm. The firewall sits at the point of drafting: writers work from the fact list, not from a partner brief, and the second reader checks that nothing in the piece reads as a recommendation to open an account.

What funding does influence is which brokers we are able to describe in detail at all. FxPro is covered here because the desk has the facts to hand: platforms MT4, MT5, cTrader and FxPro Edge, the entity serving South Africa, FxPro Markets Direct Costa Rica Latam SRL, and the regulator position. FxPro is licensed by the FCA (UK) and CySEC, and an FxPro entity holds an FSCA licence in South Africa, so we tell readers to check which entity their own account is opened with. That check matters more than any ranking.

What funding does not influence is the risk framing, and that is not negotiable with anyone. Gold at the stated leverage can move against a position faster than a rand-funded account expects, and leverage is a cap rather than a setting to aim at. Every note that touches position size says so. If a partner objected to that sentence, the arrangement would end rather than the sentence. Readers should treat any page on this site that stops mentioning risk as a page something has gone wrong with, and tell us.

How a number earns its place on this site, and what we do when we do not have one

A number appears on Karoo Picks only if it can be traced to a stated source, and if it cannot, the sentence is rewritten to describe what the figure depends on instead. For gold, that means the instrument facts are fixed and repeatable: XAU/USD, one standard lot equals 100 oz, one pip equals 0.01, and a reference price near 4275.0. Those are arithmetic, not opinion, and any reader can check them against a live chart. Leverage is quoted as the cap it is, up to 1:200 for retail and up to 1:500 for eligible or professional clients depending on instrument.

Costs are handled differently, and deliberately. We are not given spread, commission, swap or minimum deposit figures for this account, so we do not print any, and we do not describe them as competitive, tight or low. What we can say is what a cost consists of: the spread between bid and ask, any commission charged per lot, and swap applied to positions held overnight. Which of those dominates depends on holding period, instrument and account type. A reader who wants the actual numbers should read them off the platform at the moment of trading.

Margin is where a worked figure is safe, because it is a formula rather than a quote. At the stated cap, a 0.10-lot gold position needs about $85.50 margin, and a reader can scale that to any size they actually intend to trade. Rand amounts are converted at the rate on the day, so we treat them as illustrative and say so. When a fact is missing, the page says what the answer depends on and stops there. A gap we name is more useful than a number we invented.

What we are not

Karoo Picks is not a broker, a bank, a financial services provider or a licensed adviser, and nothing here should be read as personal financial advice. We do not hold client money, we do not open accounts for anyone, and we cannot touch a trading account on your behalf. If you have a problem with an account, a withdrawal or a position, the broker is the only party that can resolve it.

We are also not a regulator and we do not supervise anyone. Where a regulator is named on this site, it is because a broker holds a licence there, not because we do. The licence fact we rely on for FxPro is this: 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.

How to challenge a figure, a sentence or a whole note on this site

To challenge something published here, quote the exact sentence and say what you think is wrong with it, and the desk will re-derive the figure from source rather than defend the text. The most useful challenges are specific: a lot size that does not match 100 oz, a pip value applied to the wrong decimal, a margin example that does not follow from the stated cap. Send those and the second reader reworks the arithmetic independently. Vague disagreement about tone is read, but it rarely changes a page, because tone is not a factual claim.

Challenges about the broker facts are treated as the highest priority, because those are the claims a reader might act on with real money. If you believe the entity serving South Africa, the regulator position or the leverage cap has been stated wrongly, say which line and what you believe the correct position to be. The FSCA and FCA registers are public, so these are checkable. Where a challenge is right, the correction goes into the page and the note is re-read in full, not patched in one place and left inconsistent elsewhere.

Disagreement about what we leave out is also welcome, and it is often the most useful kind. If a note describes what a cost depends on and you think a reader would be better served by a different framing, say so. We will not invent a spread, a commission, a swap or a minimum deposit to fill the gap, and we will not describe costs we have no figure for as low or competitive. Within that limit, the explanation can be rebuilt. A page that survives a determined reader trying to break it is the only version worth publishing.

What counts as a number worth printing on this site, and what happens when we do not have one

A number earns its place only when the desk can point to where it came from and show the reader the same trail. For gold, that means a figure such as the pip value of 0.01 on XAU/USD, the 100 oz size of one standard lot, or the roughly $85.50 margin needed for a 0.10-lot position at 1:200. Those are arithmetic consequences of stated inputs, and the note shows the inputs. A spread or a swap quoted without a source is not a number we print, however plausible it looks.

When the desk does not have a number, the note describes what the cost consists of and what it depends on instead of guessing. For a gold position that means naming the components: the spread the broker quotes, any commission attached to the account type, and the swap or financing charge that depends on the position's direction and how long it is held. The note says these vary by account and by entity, and leaves the reader to check their own platform rather than inventing a figure to fill the space.

Leverage is treated as a cap, never as a target, and the note says so plainly. Up to 1:200 is available to retail clients in South Africa and up to 1:500 for eligible or professional clients depending on the instrument, but the desk does not present either ratio as a setting a trader should aim for. The margin figure is shown so the reader can see the arithmetic, not as encouragement to size a position at the cap. Where a number would imply a promise of return, it does not go in.

Who signs off on a Karoo Picks gold note and how that sign-off works

A single editor signs off every gold note before it goes live, and that editor is the only person who can approve a number for publication. The writer drafts, a second reader checks the arithmetic against the source, and the editor makes the final call on whether the claim is grounded. No note about XAU/USD publishes on a writer's say-so alone. Decisions are made against a written checklist, not by vote or seniority, so a junior writer can hold up a note and a senior one cannot wave it through.

The editor's decision rule is simple: if a figure cannot be traced to a source the desk holds, it does not appear. That applies to spreads, swaps, margin requirements and leverage alike. Where the only honest statement is that a cost depends on the account type, the instrument and the broker entity, the note says exactly that rather than reaching for a number. The editor also checks that any rand amount is labelled as an estimate in ZAR and not presented as a fixed quote, since ZAR conversion moves with the exchange rate.

Decisions about what the desk covers are made by the same editor, with input from the writers who follow XAU/USD day to day. The test is whether a note helps a South African trader understand the mechanics of a gold position, not whether it will attract clicks. A note that repeats a broker's marketing line without testing it does not clear. When the desk cannot resolve a question internally, the note is held rather than published with a gap, and the open question is logged until a grounded answer exists.

The people who write Karoo Picks and the review that clears every gold note

Karoo Picks is produced by a small editorial desk of South African writers who trade and write about XAU/USD, with no separate marketing team between the research and the page. Each gold note is drafted by one writer, then read by a second who checks every figure against the source list before publication. Nobody publishes their own work unchecked. That two-person rule is the whole decision structure: there is no editor above it who can wave a claim through on deadline, and no sponsored slot that skips the queue.

Decisions about what the site covers are made on reader questions, not on a content calendar. When several South African readers ask the same thing about gold lot sizing, platform choice or rand funding, that question becomes the next note. The desk decides by a simple test: does the answer change what someone does with a live XAU/USD position? If it only fills space, it does not go up. Coverage of MT4, MT5, cTrader and FxPro Edge follows the same test, because platform mechanics change how a trader reads a price.

Corrections are decided by the same two people who wrote and checked the piece, and the writer who made the error does not get to sign off the fix alone. Where a mistake touches a number, the second reader re-derives it from scratch rather than comparing it to the old text. This is deliberately slower than a single-editor model, and it means the desk publishes fewer notes per week than a template site would. The trade-off is that a figure on the page has been arrived at twice.

How we are funded

Affiliate links are the only revenue on this site. If a reader follows a link to a broker and opens an account, the broker may pay us a referral fee. That fee never changes what we write: it does not buy a rating, it does not remove a weakness from a page, and it does not decide the order in which brokers are discussed. A broker that pays us nothing gets the same treatment as one that does.

We do not sell sponsored reviews, paid placement, guest posts or advertising of any kind. If that ever changes, it will be stated on the page it affects before the reader reaches the link. Until then, the only thing money buys here is the continued existence of the desk.

Why gold is the instrument this desk writes about, in rand terms

Gold is the instrument this desk covers because XAU/USD is one of the few markets where a South African reader can check the arithmetic themselves and where the rand conversion is part of the decision. One standard lot is 100 oz and one pip is 0.01, so a move of a few dollars in the gold price is a large swing in rand on a full lot. That combination of a clean formula and a volatile rand makes gold a good test case for honest writing: either the numbers reconcile or they do not, and the reader can see which.

The rand side is where local readers get caught out, and the desk writes for that. Profit and loss on XAU/USD settles in US dollars, so a position can be right on the gold price and still disappoint once converted, and the reverse is also true. Local funding runs through cards and bank transfers in ZAR, and through e-wallets, which means the rand enters the account before it becomes dollars. We describe that path plainly rather than treating the conversion as a detail, because for a South African trader it is part of the cost of the trade.

This is also why the desk refuses to dress gold up as a safe, steady instrument. It is a leveraged, volatile market, and at up to 1:200 for retail a modest adverse move can take a large share of the margin behind a position. The worked example of about $85.50 margin on a 0.10-lot position is there to make that concrete, not to suggest a size to trade. Readers in South Africa should assume the rand adds a second source of movement on top of the gold price, and size accordingly.

What this desk will never print about XAU/USD, and why the omissions are the point

This desk will never print a spread, commission, swap or minimum deposit figure for an account where we have not been given one, and it will never describe such costs as competitive, tight or low. Those words are claims, and a claim without a number behind it is exactly the kind of thing that costs a reader money. What we print instead is the structure: the spread between bid and ask, any per-lot commission, and swap on positions held overnight. Which of those matters most depends on how long the position is held, so the reader is told what to check rather than what to believe.

We will never state a leverage ratio other than the cap we were given, up to 1:200 for retail and up to 1:500 for eligible or professional clients depending on instrument, and we will never present that cap as a target. Higher leverage does not improve a gold trade; it shrinks the margin behind it and brings the margin call closer. The same discipline applies to regulatory wording: we quote the FCA and CySEC licensing and the FSCA position as given, and we tell readers to confirm which entity their own account sits with rather than implying it does not matter.

We will never guarantee an outcome, promise a return, or write a sentence that assumes the reader will make money on gold. Trading XAU/USD is high-risk and most short-term attempts lose after costs, which is a statement about the market rather than about any broker. Nor will we name a funding route that is not on the list we hold, or invent a promotion, a bonus or a date to make a page feel current. If a page looks thin on numbers, that is the standard working, not an oversight.