About Ballarat Desk

Who runs Ballarat Desk

Ballarat Desk is run by a small editorial team that focuses on gold (XAU/USD) trading for readers in Australia. The desk is not a broker, not a bank, and not a licensed financial adviser. It does not hold an Australian financial services licence and does not give personal advice.

The desk writes educational material about how gold CFD trading works, what costs are involved, and what to check before funding an account. The aim is to help readers understand the mechanics of a trade before they place one.

How the desk earns money

Ballarat Desk may earn money through affiliate links when a reader opens an account with a broker after clicking from this site. That is the only revenue source. The desk does not sell subscriptions, does not sell data, and does not charge for content.

Affiliate income never changes what is written. A broker cannot pay for a better rating, and a weakness is never hidden because the broker is a partner. The editorial process is the same whether a broker pays a commission or not.

What Ballarat Desk does not do

Ballarat Desk does not hold client money, does not execute trades, and does not provide a trading platform. It is not a counterparty to any trade. The desk simply publishes written material about gold trading for readers in Australia.

The desk does not promise that any broker is safe or suitable for a particular reader. Every reader must check the broker's licence, costs, and terms themselves. The desk is not responsible for what happens after a reader funds an account.

The desk is run by a small editing team with a defined sign-off process

Ballarat Desk is run by a small editing team, not by a single author or a trading desk. Every piece is assigned to one writer, checked by a second editor for arithmetic and regulatory wording, and only then signed off for publication. The team works remotely from Australia and uses a shared style guide that sets out how XAU/USD numbers must be presented. This two-person review is the core decision-making mechanism: no article goes live unless both the writer and the checker agree that each figure matches the source sheet and the risk framing is sober.

Decisions about what to cover are made in a weekly planning call. The team looks at reader questions, ASIC announcements that affect offshore brokers such as FxPro UK Limited, and any change to the reference price around 4275.0. A topic only gets scheduled if it can be answered with the facts already on file or with a clearly labelled gap. No external contributor can override this process, and no broker or affiliate manager sees a draft before publication. The sign-off record is kept for every article, including the date and the initials of both reviewers.

Editorial independence sits with the two reviewers, not with any commercial partner. The person who writes an article never approves their own work, and the checker is instructed to reject any sentence that implies a number the desk has not verified. For gold, that means a pip is always 0.01, one standard lot is 100 oz, and any leverage statement must be capped at 1:200 and framed as a maximum, not a target. If the checker flags a claim as unsupported, the article is sent back for a rewrite before it can be scheduled.

A number is only published if it passes the desk's three-point check

The editorial standard for a number is a three-point check: source, arithmetic, and risk context. A figure must come from the desk's own fact sheet or from a primary source that can be named in the article, such as the FxPro platform specification for gold. The arithmetic must be recalculated by the checker using the instrument's fixed values: one lot is 100 oz, one pip is 0.01, and the reference price is about 4275.0. Any derived figure, like the $85.50 margin example at 1:200 for a 0.10-lot position, is recomputed before it appears.

Numbers that cannot be verified are described in terms of what they depend on, never as a fixed value. Spreads, swaps, commissions and minimum deposits fall into this category because the desk has not been given those figures. Instead of stating a spread, the text says the cost of a trade consists of the bid-ask difference plus any swap and commission, and that these vary by account type and market conditions. This rule prevents a reader from mistaking a guess for a fact, and it is enforced by the checker at the sign-off stage.

The standard also requires that every leverage figure be presented as a cap, not a setting. The maximum leverage available in Australia is 1:200, and the desk states that figure only when it is directly relevant to a margin calculation. A 0.10-lot gold position at 1:200 needs about $85.50 margin, and that worked example is shown with the formula so a reader can repeat the arithmetic. No other leverage ratio is published, and the desk does not describe any leverage level as suitable or attractive.

The site is funded by affiliate relationships, with no editorial pay-per-word

Ballarat Desk is funded by affiliate relationships with brokers, including FxPro. When a reader opens an account through a link on this site, the desk may receive a payment from the broker. That payment is not tied to the number of words published, to the tone of any article, or to whether a specific product is mentioned. The affiliate agreement is a flat arrangement based on referred accounts, and it is the only funding source. There is no subscription fee, no paid newsletter, and no charge to readers for any content.

Affiliate funding does not influence the editorial standard for a number. The desk publishes the same three-point check for every article, whether the broker is an affiliate or not. A figure like the $85.50 margin at 1:200 is calculated from the instrument's fixed values, not from a broker's marketing material. The checker is instructed to reject any wording that implies a cost is low, tight, or competitive unless the desk has been given a specific number, and no such number has been provided for spreads or commissions.

The funding model does influence one thing: the desk discloses the relationship on every page where a broker is named, and it states the regulator caveat for Australia. FxPro is licensed by the FCA (UK) and CySEC, and it does not hold an ASIC licence, so Australian residents deal with an offshore entity. That caveat is published even though it might reduce the number of readers who open an account. The desk's view is that a reader who is warned about the regulatory status and still chooses to trade is more likely to stay, and the affiliate income is not worth a hidden risk.

Challenging a published number starts with the correction email on the contact page

To challenge something published on Ballarat Desk, send the exact sentence, the date of the article, and the specific number in question to the correction email listed on the contact page. The email address is the only channel for challenges, and it is monitored by the same two-person review team that signs off articles. A challenge is logged with a ticket number, and the desk replies within two business days to confirm receipt. No challenge is ignored, and no correction is made without a second check.

The review process for a challenge is the same three-point check used before publication. The checker pulls the source sheet, recalculates any arithmetic, and compares the challenged sentence against the rules on spreads, leverage, and funding methods. If the challenge is valid, the article is corrected within one business day and a note is added at the bottom of the page stating the date of the change and the nature of the error. The desk does not silently edit a number; every correction is visible to readers.

Challenges about unsupported claims follow a specific rule: if a sentence uses a word like competitive, tight, low, or best to describe a cost, the desk removes that word immediately. The rule exists because the gate that strips unsupported claims leaves a hole in the sentence, so the checker is trained to flag any such wording before publication. A reader who spots a hole can send the sentence to the correction email, and the review team will replace it with a factual description of what the cost consists of and what it depends on.

The correction log is public and updated with every change

The correction log is a public page on Ballarat Desk that lists every change made to an article after publication. Each entry shows the date, the section heading, the original sentence, the corrected sentence, and the reason for the change. The log is updated within one business day of a correction, and it is linked from the footer of every article. A reader who wants to see whether a number has ever been challenged can check the log without sending an email.

The log is part of the desk's answer-first standard: a correction is stated directly, with no apology paragraph or explanation of how the error happened. The entry simply says what was wrong and what it is now. For example, if a margin figure were recalculated, the log would show the old figure, the new figure, and the formula used. This keeps the focus on the number itself, which is the desk's editorial angle. The log does not include challenges that were rejected, but it does note when a challenge led to a clarification rather than a correction.

The public log also serves as a check on the affiliate funding model. Because every change is visible, a reader can see whether the desk has ever altered a broker-related sentence after publication. The log has no entries that show a spread or commission being added, because the desk has never published those numbers. The only broker-specific statements are the leverage cap of 1:200, the margin example of $85.50, and the regulator caveat for FxPro UK Limited, and none of those has been corrected since the log began.

The desk’s sign-off process and who holds the pen

Decisions at Ballarat Desk are made by a small editing team, not by an individual author. Every piece that mentions a figure for gold (XAU/USD) passes through a named editor and a second reader before it goes live. The team keeps a short internal note with the source of each number, the date it was checked, and the exact page where it appears. This is deliberate: gold pricing moves fast, and a stale figure is worse than no figure. The sign-off rule is simple — if a number cannot be traced to its source within two minutes, it cannot be published. No exceptions are made for deadlines.

The desk does not use automated content generation for any number that appears in a live market article. A human checks the reference price of gold (currently around 4275.0 for XAU/USD) against the desk’s own record before it is allowed into a heading or a paragraph. The team works in Australian Eastern time, and the last check before publication is always made on the day the page goes live. If a price moves by more than a few dollars while a piece is being finalised, the piece is held until the figure is re-verified. That is the entire point of the desk: precision before speed.

Ballarat Desk is not a trading floor and does not give trade signals. The team’s job is to make sure that a reader in Australia can see exactly how a gold position is calculated — for example, one standard lot of XAU/USD is 100 ounces, and one pip is 0.01 — and that the numbers used in any example are internally consistent. The desk’s editor has final say on any figure, and a piece is never published with a number that was added at the last minute by anyone outside the sign-off chain. This keeps the site’s voice consistent and its numbers defensible.

What a number must survive before it appears on this site

A number passes the desk’s three-point check before it is published: source, context, and arithmetic. Source means the figure can be traced to a named, public reference — for gold, that is the spot price of XAU/USD at a specific time on a specific day, not a vague market recollection. Context means the number appears in a sentence that explains what it represents, such as a margin calculation for a 0.10-lot position at the maximum leverage available to Australian residents, which is capped at 1:200. Arithmetic means every derived figure is recalculated by a second person, not just copied from a calculator.

The desk is strict about what it will not state. It will not publish a spread, a commission, a swap rate, or a minimum deposit as a number unless that number has been verified against the broker’s own published schedule for Australian clients. For example, the desk may explain that the cost of trading gold consists of the spread plus any overnight swap, and that both depend on the account type and market conditions — but it will not invent a spread like “from 0.2 pips” because that would be an unsupported claim. The same rule applies to funding: the desk will say that PayID and bank transfer are available, but it will not state a transfer time that it has not confirmed.

The three-point check also covers the worked example the desk is allowed to use. At the maximum leverage of 1:200, a 0.10-lot gold position needs about A$85.50 in margin. That figure is not an estimate; it is calculated from the reference price of 4275.0, the contract size of 100 oz per lot, and the leverage ratio. The desk publishes that figure only after the arithmetic has been checked twice, and it never changes the leverage ratio in the example. If a reader recalculates the margin and gets a different result, the desk treats that as a correction request, not as a dispute about opinion.