Laguna Basics
How we test

How we test

What we check before a broker is ranked, where our numbers come from, and the limits of our testing.

What we check, and in what order

Every broker page starts with the same question: can a resident of the Philippines open an account, fund it with a local method and withdraw again. A broker that fails that is not ranked, however good its spreads look.

Then, in order: which entity takes the client and who licenses it; the real cost of a round trip on gold; funding and withdrawal methods and their fees; platform support; and what the broker's own documents say about leverage and negative balance protection.

Where our numbers come from

Costs and conditions come from the broker's own published documents and account pages, with the date we read them. Where a figure is from a third party, we name the third party.

Conditions drift. A spread table read three months ago is not evidence about today, so pages carry the date they were checked and we re-read rather than re-publish.

The limits of our testing

We do not have an account with every broker we write about, and we say which ones we have used. Where we have not, the page reports documents and published terms, not experience.

Our calculators use standard contract sizes and the leverage you enter. They are arithmetic, not a simulation of your broker's margin engine.

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FAQ

Common questions

How does Laguna Basics check the numbers on its pages?

Every figure is either quoted from the broker's own published material or worked out from the contract terms we state: 100 oz per lot, 0.01 pip, and a reference price near 4275.0. Where we cannot confirm a number, we describe what it depends on instead of printing a figure. The margin example of about $85.50 on 0.10 lots is calculated, not quoted.

What does the desk refuse to publish?

We do not publish spreads, commissions, swap rates, minimum deposits or bonus terms as numbers, because we have not been given verified figures for the Philippine entity. We also do not publish awards, app ratings, execution speeds or company details we cannot confirm. If a page needs a cost, it says what the cost consists of and what it depends on.

How often are the pages and calculators reviewed?

Pages are reviewed when a fact changes, such as a regulator sentence, a platform list or a contract term, and the calculators are re-checked against those same terms. We do not print a review date we cannot stand behind. If you spot a figure that looks stale, the corrections page explains how to flag it.

Why do you describe leverage as a cap rather than a target?

Because that is what it is. The maximum leverage available in the Philippines is the cap that applies to the entity serving this country, and it is a ceiling, not a setting to aim at. Higher leverage shrinks the margin a position needs and enlarges the loss a small move can cause, so we treat it as a risk limit.

What are the limits of what this desk can verify?

We can verify contract terms, the platform list and the regulator sentence, and we can redo our own arithmetic. We cannot verify live pricing, execution quality or the internal handling of a client account, so we do not rate them. Anything that depends on the broker's live conditions is described as depending on them, not stated as fact.