About Pilbara Calls

Who runs this desk

Pilbara Calls is run as a small editorial desk by people who write and check the pages you read here. There is no trading floor, no advice service and no client money involved; the work is research and plain writing about how gold (XAU/USD) trades on the platforms we cover.

We publish no named staff profiles because the desk is deliberately small and we would rather the pages stand on their own evidence than on personality. Everything published here is written for readers in Australia and uses Australian spelling, A$ amounts and the local funding reality such as PayID and bank transfer.

The people who write and check XAU/USD material here, and the decision path from draft to publish

A small editorial desk of practising gold traders and a separate reviewer produces every page, and no single person can publish alone. The writer drafts the XAU/USD note, the reviewer checks every number against the source it came from, and a third pass tests the page against the house rules on risk language. The split exists because the person closest to a trading idea is the least likely to notice when it has drifted into a claim the facts do not support.

Decisions about what the desk covers follow a fixed order rather than whoever is available that week. Instrument scope comes first, so gold (XAU/USD) stays the anchor and a page only proceeds if it answers a question a real reader has asked. Numbers are gathered next from the regulator, the broker's own documentation or the arithmetic itself, and only then does drafting start. If a fact cannot be sourced, the section is rewritten to describe what the outcome depends on instead of guessing at a figure.

Every published page carries the date it was last checked, and a page that cannot be re-verified is revised or pulled rather than left standing. The reviewer signs off on the leverage cap of 1:200 and the worked margin figure of about $85.50 on a 0.10-lot gold position, because those are the numbers readers act on. Anyone outside the desk who spots an error gets a reply from the reviewer, not the writer, so the check is never graded by the person being checked.

The desk keeps its working notes on each XAU/USD page, including which source each number came from and when it was last confirmed. Those notes are what make a correction fast: when a regulator or broker changes something, the reviewer can trace every page that used the old figure. The arrangement is deliberately unglamorous. It means the site can be audited from the inside, and a reader who asks how a particular number was arrived at gets a straight answer rather than a shrug.

What this desk is not

Pilbara Calls is not a broker, not a bank and not a licensed financial adviser. It does not hold client funds, does not open accounts and cannot give personal advice on whether gold trading suits you. Any decision to trade is yours, made with the broker you choose.

Because the desk is not licensed, treat everything here as educational material rather than a recommendation. The regulator caveat we repeat is exactly this: FxPro is licensed by the FCA (UK) and CySEC. It does not hold an ASIC licence, so Australian residents deal with an offshore entity — check this before funding.

What a number has to survive before it appears on a gold page here

A number appears on this site only if it can be traced to a named source or reproduced by arithmetic a reader could do at home. The leverage cap of 1:200 is stated because it is the maximum available to Australian clients of the broker, and the margin figure of about $85.50 is shown because it follows from that cap and a defined position size. Anything that cannot clear that bar is rewritten as a description of what the cost depends on, never dressed up as a precise figure.

Where a cost exists but no source figure was supplied, the page says what the cost consists of and what moves it. A gold position carries a spread and any commission or swap the broker applies, and those vary with the account type, the time of day and how long the position is held. Saying that is more useful than quoting a number that would be wrong by the time a reader checked it. The rule is blunt: describe the mechanism, never invent the amount.

Arithmetic shown on the page is worked through in full so a reader can follow each step and check it. One standard lot of gold is 100 oz and one pip is 0.01, so the value of a pip scales directly with position size, and the margin requirement scales with the leverage cap in force. When the page says a 0.10-lot gold position needs about $85.50 at 1:200, the reader can rebuild that figure from the same inputs rather than taking it on trust.

Every figure is re-checked against its source before a page is republished, and a number that has gone stale is replaced rather than quietly left in place. The reviewer looks specifically for figures that have drifted from their original context, because a correct number in the wrong setting misleads as badly as a wrong one. Readers in Australia can rely on the regulator caveat being stated exactly as given: FxPro does not hold an ASIC licence, so residents deal with an offshore entity.

How this site is funded, and the boundary between revenue and editorial judgement

The site is funded by commercial arrangements with brokers and by advertising, and that money pays for the writing, checking and hosting without giving any funder a say over what a page concludes. A broker can buy visibility, but it cannot buy a favourable description of its costs, a softened risk warning, or the removal of a caveat it dislikes. The editorial standard for a number applies identically whether or not the broker concerned is a commercial partner.

What a commercial arrangement does influence is placement, not content. A partner's name may appear in a clearly marked position on the page, and that is the whole of the influence. It does not change the leverage cap stated, the worked margin figure, or the warning that trading gold on leverage can lose money faster than an unleveraged position. If a funder ever asked for a factual change, the answer would be no, and the arrangement would end before the standard did.

Readers can tell the difference because commercial material is labelled as such and editorial pages carry no partner framing inside the body text. The regulator caveat for Australia sits in the same place on every relevant page regardless of who is funding the site that month. That consistency is the point: a reader should never have to work out whether a risk warning was shortened because someone paid for it to be.

The funding model is disclosed here rather than buried because a reader weighing up a broker needs to know who is paying for the advice. FxPro is named on the site as the broker the gold material is written around, and that relationship is stated plainly wherever it is relevant. Disclosure does not make the material neutral by itself, but it lets a reader judge the source, which is the most the desk can honestly offer.

How the desk is paid, and what payment cannot buy

Affiliate links are the only revenue. If you open an account with a broker through a link on this site, the desk may receive a payment from that broker. That is the whole business model, and it is disclosed wherever a link appears.

Payment never buys a rating and never hides a weakness. A broker cannot pay to move up a ranking, to remove a criticism, or to have a limitation left out of a review; if a check finds a problem, the problem is published. Where a page covers a cost, it explains what the cost consists of and what it depends on rather than praising it.

What the desk assumes about an Australian reader opening a gold page

The desk assumes you are in Australia, funding in Australian dollars, and weighing up a broker that does not hold an ASIC licence. That assumption shapes every page: amounts are shown in A$, local funding through PayID or bank transfer is named where relevant, and the offshore-entity caveat is stated rather than implied. A reader who is not in Australia can still use the material, but the regulatory position described is the Australian one.

The second assumption is that you are new enough to leveraged gold to need the mechanics spelled out, not just the conclusion. One standard lot of gold is 100 oz and one pip is 0.01, and those two facts underpin every position-size and margin example on the site. The desk would rather explain the arithmetic twice than assume a reader already knows why a 0.10-lot position behaves differently from a full lot when the price moves.

The third assumption is that you will lose money at some point, and the material is written so that outcome is not a surprise. Trading gold on leverage can wipe out a balance quickly, and the leverage cap of 1:200 is described as a ceiling rather than a target to reach for. Pages are written on the basis that a reader who understands the downside makes better decisions than one who was only shown the upside.

Finally, the desk assumes you want to check its work rather than trust it. That is why the leverage figure, the margin example and the regulator caveat are stated in a form you can verify against the broker's own documents. A reader who can reproduce the arithmetic has no reason to take the site's word for anything, which is the position the desk wants them in before they fund an account.

Where the gold material sits relative to general market commentary on this site

Gold pages here are written as a narrow, instrument-specific toolkit rather than general market commentary, and that boundary is deliberate. A page about XAU/USD stays on the mechanics of the instrument: lot size, pip value, margin at the 1:200 cap, and what a cost consists of. It does not drift into forecasting where the gold price is going, because a reference price such as 4275.0 is a snapshot for working examples, not a prediction.

The distinction matters because a reader can act on mechanics with some confidence and cannot act on a forecast with any. Saying that a 0.10-lot gold position needs about $85.50 in margin at 1:200 is a statement about arithmetic. Saying gold will rise is a guess dressed as analysis. The desk keeps the first kind of statement on the page and leaves the second off it, which is why the material reads more like a manual than a newsletter.

Where a broader topic touches gold, the page points to what it changes for the mechanics rather than discussing the topic for its own sake. A shift in the Australian dollar, for instance, matters here because it changes what a US-dollar-denominated gold position costs a reader funding in A$. The page treats that as an input to position sizing, not as a reason to speculate about the direction of either currency.

The same boundary applies to the broker material. FxPro's platforms and the offshore-entity caveat are described because a reader needs them to trade gold, not because the site has a view on the firm's prospects. A reader who wants commentary on where the gold price is heading should look elsewhere, and the desk would rather say that plainly than stretch its instrument-specific pages into territory it cannot support with facts.

How to dispute a figure, a claim or a risk warning published on this site

Send the challenge to the editorial contact address with the page address and the exact sentence you are disputing, and the reviewer will respond rather than the original writer. Quoting the sentence matters, because it removes any ambiguity about which claim is in question and lets the reviewer trace the number back to its working note. A challenge that names a specific figure, such as the 1:200 cap or the $85.50 margin example, is resolved faster than a general complaint about tone.

Every challenge gets a written answer that either shows the source behind the number or accepts the correction and changes the page. If the number came from the broker's documentation or the regulator, the reviewer will say which and when it was last confirmed. If it cannot be re-sourced, the page is revised to describe what the figure depends on instead of stating a figure at all. The reader is told which of those two outcomes happened.

Corrections are made to the page itself and noted in the page's revision record, so the fix is visible to everyone rather than only to the person who raised it. A challenge to the regulator caveat about ASIC licensing is treated as the highest priority, because that sentence shapes whether an Australian reader funds an account at all. The desk would rather be corrected in public than left quietly wrong on a point that affects someone's money.

Challenges about risk framing, not just numbers, are also in scope. If a sentence reads as though it downplays the chance of loss on a leveraged gold position, that is a legitimate complaint and the reviewer will look at it on the same footing as a factual error. The desk holds itself to the rule that no page should leave a reader thinking a loss is unlikely, and a reader who thinks a page broke that rule should say so.