About Aurum Rand

Who runs this desk

Aurum Rand is an independent editorial desk focused on gold trading for readers in South Africa. The desk is not a broker, a bank, or a licensed financial adviser, and it does not hold a financial services licence. We do not open accounts, hold client funds, or execute trades on anyone else's behalf.

The desk is run by writers and researchers who review brokers that offer gold CFDs to South African residents. We are separate from any broker and do not receive direction from them on what to publish. Our work is shaped by a single editorial principle: protecting the account first, so no single loss can sink a trader.

How this desk earns money

Our only revenue comes from affiliate links. If you open an account through one of these links, the broker may pay us a commission at no extra cost to you. This does not affect the price you pay or the service you receive from the broker.

Payment never buys a rating or hides a weakness. A broker cannot pay to be ranked higher, to have a negative point removed, or to be featured more prominently. We do not accept sponsored reviews, paid placements, or any form of compensation that would influence our editorial judgement.

What we are not

We are not licensed or regulated, and we do not claim to be. We are not a broker, a bank, or a financial adviser. We do not give personal advice, and we do not tell you whether to buy or sell gold or any other instrument.

We are also not a complaint resolution service. If you have a problem with a broker, we cannot intervene on your behalf or recover funds. Our role is limited to publishing research and educational material that helps you understand the risks and mechanics of gold trading.

Editorial independence is anchored in a two-step desk process

The desk is run by a small internal research team, not an individual figurehead, and every piece moves through two decision layers before publication. A lead analyst sets the angle for each pack around account protection and risk-first sizing, and a senior editor then checks every factual claim against the broker documentation we have on file. No outside contributor can approve their own copy, and no desk member may trade gold on FxPro while a gold pack is in progress. The process is deliberately simple so that a reader can always trace why a number appears.

Decisions on what to cover are made weekly based on what a South African gold trader needs to know before risking rand on a position. The desk weighs three things: whether the topic affects margin or liquidation risk, whether a fact can be sourced without guessing, and whether the explanation can stand without hype. Any idea that requires stating a spread, commission, or swap as a number is rejected unless the broker has published it in writing for the exact entity serving the client. That rule forces the team to teach the structure of a cost instead of inventing a price.

No one outside the desk can commission an article or change a verdict once the senior editor signs off. The brand owner may ask for a topic to be considered, but the two-step process still applies and the request is logged in the editorial register. If a fact cannot be verified against FxPro documentation or a regulator's public statement, the draft is returned with the relevant sentence removed. This keeps the desk's output anchored to what is provable, not to what would be convenient for a marketing calendar.

A number is only published when it appears in broker or regulator documentation

The editorial standard for any figure is that it must come from FxPro's own published material or a regulator's public record, never from a third-party price list or a forum post. For this reason the only leverage figure the desk states is the cap of up to 1:200 for retail clients in South Africa and up to 1:500 for eligible professional clients depending on instrument, because that is what the broker has documented. Any other ratio, however common in the market, is treated as unverified and is not written. The same test applies to costs: a spread, commission, or swap is described by what determines it, not by a number we do not hold.

When a number is structural rather than quoted, the desk derives it from the instrument definition and labels it as such. For gold, one standard lot is 100 ounces and one pip is 0.01, and the desk may state that at a reference price of about 4275.0 a 0.10-lot position needs roughly $85.50 margin at the retail leverage cap. That worked example is allowed because it follows from fixed contract terms and a published reference price; it is not a live quote and is presented only as an illustration of margin math. A reader can therefore see the difference between a fact sourced from documentation and an arithmetic example built on that fact.

Any number that fails the documentation test is replaced with a sentence about what the figure depends on. For example, the desk does not state a minimum deposit or a spread in pips because those vary by account entity, platform, and market session, and no single value would be true for every South African reader. Instead the copy says that the cost of trading gold consists of the difference between the buy and sell price plus any commission the account type carries, and that both can change with liquidity. This is a deliberate editorial choice: a vague dependency statement is preferable to a precise but unverified claim.

Funding is internal revenue only, with no broker or advertiser control

The site is funded entirely by the brand's own revenue from the desk's parent company, not by any broker, affiliate network, or external advertiser. The desk does not receive payment from FxPro for publishing anything, and no employee is compensated based on the number of accounts opened through a link. Because the income does not depend on broker fees or trading volume, the editorial team has no financial reason to soften a risk warning or to make a cost sound more attractive than the documentation supports. The funding model is deliberately boring so that the only pressure on a draft is accuracy.

This internal funding does not influence which facts are selected, but it does set the desk's focus. Since the parent company's reputation rests on how well the content protects a trader from one catastrophic loss, every pack is angled toward position sizing, margin, and liquidation risk. The desk is ordered to prioritise the worked margin example for gold at 0.10 lots and the leverage cap over any promotional message. When a topic could be written either as a sales pitch or as a risk explanation, the editorial standard requires the risk explanation, and that standard is enforced by the senior editor, not by a commercial team.

What the funding cannot do is buy a number. Even though the parent company pays the salaries, no one in management may instruct the desk to state that a spread is tight, a commission is low, or that leverage is a setting to aim at. Those words are banned in relation to costs because the desk holds no documented value for them. If a commercial partner were ever introduced in the future, the register would disclose it on this page and the two-step process would remain unchanged. For now, the only outside input is the reader's own challenge, which is treated as editorial review rather than as a revenue matter.

Challenging a published fact starts with a written query and ends in a correction note

Any reader who believes a fact on this site is wrong or outdated can challenge it by sending a written query to the desk through the contact form on the about page. The query must name the specific sentence, the fact it disputes, and the documentation the reader is relying on, such as a broker statement, a regulator's notice, or a screenshot of the platform. The desk logs every challenge in the editorial register and does not ignore a query simply because it comes from a retail trader rather than a professional. The first response is usually within two working days, and it states whether the claim is being re-examined.

When a challenge is received, the senior editor re-runs the two-step verification process on the disputed fact. The lead analyst pulls the original source from the desk's file, and the senior editor compares it with the reader's evidence and with any newer broker documentation. If the original source was correct at the time of publication but has since changed, the desk updates the relevant paragraph and adds a dated correction note at the top of the page. If the original source was misread, the error is corrected within one working day and the register records the mistake. No editor may dismiss a challenge without a written reason.

A challenge does not automatically change the copy; it changes the copy only when the desk's own documentation check confirms the reader is right. For example, if a reader claims the leverage cap is different because their professional account shows a higher ratio, the desk will not change the stated cap of up to 1:200 for retail and up to 1:500 for eligible professional clients depending on instrument, because that is what the broker's documentation for South Africa says. The desk will instead clarify the entity caveat and explain that the cap is a maximum, not a promise. Every correction is logged with the date and the source of the correction, so a reader can audit the desk's own record.

The correction register is public and the desk's file is open to review

Every correction made to any page on this site is recorded in a public register linked from the footer, with the date, the original sentence, the corrected sentence, and the source that justified the change. The desk does not quietly edit a fact without a register entry, and the senior editor is personally responsible for keeping the register current. A reader who spots a mismatch between the register and the live page can flag it as a separate challenge, which is then treated as a priority because it suggests an internal process failure. The register is deliberately plain text, with no commentary or spin, so the record speaks for itself.

The desk's source file for this page contains the broker documentation, the regulator caveat, and the worked margin example, and a reader may request a summary of that file for any specific fact. The desk will not email the entire file, but it will provide the exact sentence from the source that supports a published claim, along with the document name and the date it was accessed. For example, a reader asking about the leverage cap will receive the broker's own wording for South Africa and the entity name FxPro Markets Direct Costa Rica Latam SRL, so they can verify it independently. This openness is a deliberate check on the desk's own bias.

A reader who challenges a fact and is not satisfied with the desk's response may escalate to the parent company's compliance officer, whose contact address is on the same register. The compliance officer is not part of the editorial desk and has the authority to order a retraction if the desk has failed to follow its own documentation standard. No retraction has been ordered to date, but the process exists because the desk's credibility depends on being willing to lose an argument. The final safeguard is structural: because the site is funded internally, no advertiser can pressure the desk to bury a challenge, and the register remains the public proof of that independence.