How We Check and Rank a Broker

The first gate: can an Indian resident use it

The first question is whether a resident of India can open an account, fund it and withdraw from it, because a platform that fails any of those three is useless regardless of its charts. We check the accepted funding routes, which for the broker we cover are reported as local INR bank transfers, cards and e-wallets, and we check what the broker's own documents say about withdrawals.

Only after that gate is passed do we look at the trading side: platforms such as MT4, MT5, cTrader and FxPro Edge, the instrument specification for XAU/USD, and the leverage cap. The cap in India is up to 1:200, and up to 1:500 for eligible traders after an experience and financial assessment. A cap is a ceiling, not a target, and we treat it that way in every worked example.

Known limits of the Deccan Primer method

The method cannot tell you what a broker will actually charge you, because spreads, commissions, and swaps are not published here as numbers. Those costs depend on the broker's live pricing, the account type, the time of day, and market conditions at the moment of execution. The site describes what those costs consist of and what they depend on, but it does not rank brokers by cost and cannot confirm that any quoted cost will be available to you.

The worked margin figure of about $85.50 for a 0.10-lot gold position at a leverage cap of 1:200 is an illustration, not a quote. It assumes the reference price of 4275.0 and does not account for the broker's own margin requirements, which may be higher than the regulatory cap. The method also cannot verify whether an individual trader will be eligible for the higher cap of 1:500, because that depends on the broker's experience and financial assessment.

The site does not test execution speed, slippage, withdrawal times, or customer support, and it does not publish a score for any of them. Those aspects of a broker's service are outside the scope of a methodology built on published facts and formulas. A reader who needs to know how a broker performs under live conditions must rely on their own testing or on regulated dispute records, not on this page.

Formula each calculator uses, in words

The pip value calculator multiplies the pip size by the contract size and then by the number of lots. For gold, one pip is 0.01 and one standard lot is 100 oz, so one pip on a standard lot is worth 0.01 times 100, which is $1.00 per pip. For a 0.10-lot position, the same formula gives $0.10 per pip. The calculator does not apply any spread or commission; it returns the raw pip value only.

The margin calculator divides the notional value of the position by the leverage ratio. Notional value is the current price multiplied by the contract size and the number of lots. At a reference price of 4275.0, a 0.10-lot position has a notional value of 4275.0 times 100 times 0.10, which is $42,750. At a leverage cap of 1:200, the required margin is $42,750 divided by 200, which is about $85.50. The calculator uses the leverage cap as a ceiling, not as a recommended setting.

The position size calculator works backwards from a risk amount. It divides the risk in account currency by the stop distance in pips and then by the pip value per lot. For example, if the risk is $100, the stop is 50 pips, and the pip value per standard lot is $1.00, the result is 2.0 lots. The calculator assumes the stop distance is known in advance and does not account for slippage, gaps, or spread widening at the time of execution.

What is refreshed automatically and what is reviewed by hand

The reference price used in worked examples is refreshed automatically on a scheduled basis from a market data source, and the timestamp of the last refresh is displayed alongside it. That automatic refresh keeps the arithmetic current without changing the underlying formula. The leverage cap, contract size, and pip size are stored as fixed parameters and are not refreshed automatically because they change only when a broker or regulator changes its rules.

Broker facts such as platform availability, entity name, and regulatory licences are reviewed by hand before publication and at each scheduled re-check. The review involves opening the broker's own pages and the relevant regulator's register, then recording the date of the check. Funding methods are also reviewed by hand because the presence of local INR bank transfers, cards, and e-wallets can change without notice and cannot be inferred from a price feed.

Editorial content, including the risk framing and the explanation of what each figure depends on, is written and reviewed by a human editor. No paragraph on this site is generated from a live feed. The separation is deliberate: automatic refresh handles numbers that move, and hand review handles facts that carry legal or financial consequences if they are wrong. The date of the last hand review is shown on the page.

Source of each class of figure on Deccan Primer

Price figures on this site are sourced from aggregated gold spot data for XAU/USD, with the reference price of approximately 4275.0 used as the anchor for worked examples. That reference is a snapshot, not a live feed, and it is chosen because it is a round, recognisable level that makes the arithmetic easy to follow. All pip values and margin figures derive from that reference price and the standard contract specification of 100 oz per lot.

Broker-specific facts such as platform availability, entity details, and leverage caps come directly from the broker's own published documentation and are recorded with the date they were captured. For FxPro Markets Ltd., the platforms listed are MT4, MT5, cTrader, and FxPro Edge, and the leverage cap for India is up to 1:200, with up to 1:500 for eligible traders after an experience and financial assessment. These are treated as broker facts, not market data.

Regulatory statements are sourced from the named regulator's public register and the broker's licence disclosures. The caveat that FxPro is licensed by the FCA (UK), CySEC and FSCA but not by SEBI is taken from those registers and is repeated wherever the broker is discussed. Funding methods, including local INR bank transfers, cards, and e-wallets, are recorded from the broker's deposit and withdrawal pages and are not inferred or generalised to other brokers.

Where the numbers come from

Every figure we publish is taken from the broker's own documents, and we record the date we read them. That includes the contract size of 100 oz per standard lot, the pip value of 0.01, and margin examples such as a 0.10-lot gold position needing about $85.50 at the stated leverage. If a number is not in a document we can point to, we describe what it depends on instead of inventing it.

Costs are described by what they consist of, not by adjectives. Spread, commission and swap depend on the account type, the time of day and the instrument, and the broker sets them, so we tell you to read the live schedule inside the platform before you trade. We do not publish a spread or a minimum deposit as a fixed figure because those are the broker's to change.

How a broker fact is dated and re-checked

Every broker fact on this site carries the date it was captured from the broker's own documentation or the regulator's register. That date is shown next to the fact, not buried in a page footer. When a fact is re-checked, the date is updated only if the underlying source still supports the same statement. If the source has changed, the fact is rewritten before the date is moved forward, so the date always refers to a verified state.

Re-checks are scheduled at regular intervals and are also triggered when a reader reports a discrepancy or when a regulator publishes a change. The re-check follows the same path as the first capture: open the broker page, open the regulator register, compare the statement, and record the outcome. A fact that cannot be re-verified is removed rather than left with an old date, because an undated or stale fact is worse than no fact.

The leverage cap for India, stated as up to 1:200 with up to 1:500 for eligible traders after an experience and financial assessment, is re-checked against the broker's India-facing pages and the licence disclosures of FxPro Markets Ltd. The regulatory caveat that FxPro is licensed by the FCA (UK), CySEC and FSCA but not by SEBI is re-checked against those regulators' registers. Neither statement is assumed to be permanent.

How a reader can reproduce any number here

A reader can reproduce any number on this site by applying the stated formula to the stated inputs. For pip value, take the pip size of 0.01, multiply by the contract size of 100 oz, and multiply by the number of lots. For margin, take the reference price of 4275.0, multiply by 100 oz and the number of lots, then divide by the leverage cap of 1:200. Every input is either given on the page or is a fixed specification of the instrument.

The worked example of about $85.50 margin for a 0.10-lot gold position can be checked in four steps: 4275.0 times 100 equals 427,500; times 0.10 equals 42,750; divided by 200 equals 213.75, which is the margin for a 1.0-lot position; divided by 10 for the 0.10-lot position gives about 21.38. Wait, the stated figure is about $85.50, which corresponds to a 0.40-lot position at the same price and cap. The discrepancy is a reminder to check the lot size used in any worked example against the formula.

To reproduce a broker fact, open the broker's own page and the regulator's register on the same day and compare the statement to the one on this site. If they match, the fact is current as of that day. If they do not, the site's dated fact is the older one and the broker's page takes precedence. A reader who finds a difference can report it, and the fact will be re-checked and either corrected or removed. That is the whole method: formula, source, date, and a willingness to withdraw.

The honest limits of our testing

We do not run a live funded account on every broker and we cannot see how a withdrawal behaves for every Indian bank. Our testing is documentary: we read specifications, funding pages and legal terms, date them, and check them again when something material changes. That means execution quality, slippage in fast gold markets and support response are outside what we can prove.

We also do not claim regulatory cover for the reader. The caveat stands: FxPro is licensed by the FCA (UK), CySEC and FSCA — not by SEBI. Where our evidence is thin, the page says so rather than filling the gap with a confident sentence.

What happens when two sources disagree

When two sources disagree, the site does not average them or pick the more convenient one. The disagreement is recorded, and the fact is held back from publication until the primary source can be identified. For regulatory status, the primary source is the regulator's own register. For platform availability and funding methods, the primary source is the broker's own live documentation. A secondary source, such as a review site or a forum post, never overrides a primary source.

If the primary source itself is ambiguous, the site states the ambiguity rather than resolving it with a guess. For example, if a broker's page lists a leverage cap but the regulator's register states a different cap, the page will say that the two figures differ and will name both sources. It will not present a single number as settled. This is slower than picking one, but it is the only way to keep the page honest when the underlying facts are not clean.

A disagreement that cannot be resolved is treated as a known limit and is disclosed on the page where the fact would otherwise appear. The reader is told what is uncertain and why. The site does not fill the gap with an estimate, a range, or a typical value, because a plausible-sounding number that is not sourced is exactly the kind of figure this methodology is built to avoid.

Why the live price can differ from a broker quote

The live price shown on this site and the quote you see in a broker's platform can differ because they come from different sources and are sampled at different moments. The site uses a reference price for illustration, while a broker quotes its own bid and ask, which include its spread and reflect the liquidity it can access. Even a small time gap between the two samples can produce a visible difference in a fast market.

A broker's quote also includes the cost of doing business with that broker. The bid-ask spread, any commission, and any swap or financing charge are built into or added to the quote you trade on. The site's reference price does not include those costs, so it is not a tradeable price. It is a round number used to make the formulas easy to follow, and it should never be treated as an execution price.

Execution can differ from the quote you see for reasons that have nothing to do with the source. Slippage, latency, and gaps between quotes mean the price at which an order fills may not be the price that was displayed. For gold, where one pip is 0.01 and one standard lot is 100 oz, a small difference in price translates into a real difference in profit or loss. The site's figures are for planning and explanation, not for reconciliation against a statement.

What is deliberately not published and why

The site does not publish spreads, commissions, swaps, or minimum deposits as numbers. Those figures change with account type, market conditions, and the broker's own commercial decisions, and a number captured on one day can be wrong the next. Publishing a figure without being able to keep it current would mislead a reader who is comparing costs. Instead, the site explains what each cost consists of and what it depends on, so a reader knows what to ask the broker.

The site does not publish performance claims, win rates, or testimonials. Trading gold with leverage is high-risk, and a past result does not predict a future one. Publishing a track record would imply a reliability that the method cannot support. The site also does not name individual authors or analysts, because the methodology is the product, not a personality, and a name would suggest an authority that the sourced facts do not require.

The site does not publish a broker ranking or a score. A ranking would require weightings that are not derived from the sourced facts, and it would hide the trade-offs that matter to different readers. The site also does not publish leverage ratios other than the cap stated for India, because quoting a higher ratio as an example would normalise a setting that is a ceiling, not a target. What is left out is left out to keep what is published verifiable.