What are the FXSharp editorial principles?
FXSharp editorial principles are the four published rules that govern every review, comparison, ranking, and FAQ on the site. The framework rests on one operating idea: citing accurate, publicly available information protects both the reader and the writer. Every claim about a broker, whether positive, negative, or neutral, carries a dated source. The same standard applies in both directions: hiding a documented warning is treated as the same editorial failure as inventing one. The four principles below are not aspirational statements; they are concrete prohibitions enforced before any content goes live, audited by General Editorial Management, and re-checked whenever a regulator status changes.
Why are sourced facts the legal and ethical shield?
Source attribution is the platform's single most important defence against both defamation exposure and reader harm. A statement of the form "source + date + fact" ("the FCA added the broker to its public warning list on 14 March 2025") is a verifiable public record, not opinion, and it does not meet the defamation threshold under any major common-law or civil-law system. Legal and ethical risk lives in unsourced subjective claims, not in attributed facts. The reader benefits in the same direction: a dated, sourced statement can be re-verified at the regulator's register, while an unsourced opinion cannot.
Principle 1: Prohibition of unsourced subjective judgments
Unsourced subjective judgments are banned in both directions. Negative examples include "the broker is a scam", "the broker is unreliable", "your money will be lost", and "this firm is dishonest". Positive examples include "industry leader", "most reliable broker", "world's safest broker", and "the best execution in the market". The required format is always source + date + fact. Acceptable: "the CySEC public register lists license 123/24 as active as of 02 April 2026". Acceptable: "the FCA published a public warning against the broker on 14 March 2025 (FCA warning list)". The rule applies equally to text written by editors, content quoted from third parties, and localised editions. The objection is not to the words themselves; the objection is to subjective claims that cannot be reproduced from a public record.
Principle 2: Prohibition of two-way fabrication
Fabrication is prohibited in both directions with equal weight. Negative fabrication includes invented user complaints, fictional regulator warnings, made-up enforcement orders, and exaggerated fine amounts. Positive fabrication includes nonexistent licenses, unverified awards, inflated customer counts, and round-number trading volumes presented as fact. Operational metrics published by a broker (customer count, monthly trading volume, assets under custody) are only admissible when prefaced explicitly: "according to data published by the broker". Awards and certifications are listed only when the issuing body's public record confirms the entry. Customer or volume figures with no broker source and no independent verification are dropped from the review, not estimated.
Principle 3: Prohibition of investment advice
Investment advice is outside the editorial scope of every page on the site. Sentences of the form "you should open an account", "this broker is right for you", "this strategy is profitable", "now is a good time to deposit", or "switch from X to Y" are not published. Reviews describe what a broker offers (account types, leverage caps, spreads, platform support, deposit and withdrawal channels) without telling the reader what to do with that information. The editorial register is informative and descriptive, not directive. Even where the underlying data clearly favours one broker over another, the conclusion is left to the reader. This rule protects readers from acting on individualised advice produced without knowledge of their financial position, and it keeps the platform outside the scope of regulated investment-advice activity.
Principle 4: Impartiality in comparisons
Direct comparative judgments such as "Broker A is better than Broker B" or "Broker A is worse than Broker B" are not published as standalone claims. Comparisons are framed against industry baselines or against attributed aggregate data. Acceptable: "the industry-standard minimum deposit sits in the 100 to 500 USD band; Broker A's minimum is 250 USD". Acceptable: "Broker A's license tier is Tier 1 under the FXSharp methodology; Broker B's license tier is Tier 3". Where a side-by-side comparison page is published, every cell in the comparison table maps to a verifiable public data point with a source, not to an editorial preference. Rival broker review aggregators are not cited by name; their existence does not change the published methodology or the underlying public records used.
How are corrections handled?
Errors are corrected within a published service-level target of 48 hours from confirmation. Four correction patterns are used depending on the type of error:
- Source correction: a sourced claim is updated to point to the correct primary source, with a dated note recording the change.
- Numerical correction: an incorrect figure is struck through and replaced inline, with a date-stamped correction note at the bottom of the affected section.
- Paragraph rewrite: a paragraph carrying a material factual error is rewritten in full and the change date is logged on the page.
- Content expansion: where a material finding was missing, a new section or paragraph is added and the publication date of the addition is shown.
Correction requests are accepted through the Contact page and must point to a specific claim and a verifiable primary source (regulator URL, court filing, official press release, audited filing). Requests without a source citation do not change published content.
What independence commitments apply?
Editorial independence is enforced through four written commitments. The platform does not accept affiliate links inside review content, does not publish sponsored reviews, does not sell paid ranking positions, and does not hold any broker or financial-institution affiliations. Brokers do not preview review content before publication. Editorial staff cannot hold live trading accounts at brokers they personally cover; demo accounts used for platform verification are permitted and logged. Display advertising, where present, is labelled explicitly and sits outside the methodology scoring framework. Any current commercial relationship is disclosed on the Advertising Disclosure page.
The editorial standard in practice
The editorial standard reduces to one operating sentence: every published claim must be reproducible from a dated public source by a reader who has never spoken to the editorial team. The four principles (no unsourced subjective judgments, no two-way fabrication, no investment advice, impartial comparisons) make that standard enforceable. The 48-hour correction window, the independence commitments, and the methodology disclosure together close the loop: readers can verify scores against regulator records, dispute claims with primary sources, and watch revisions appear with dated notes on the affected pages.
This content is for informational purposes only and is not investment advice, broker recommendation, or solicitation. Trading forex and CFDs carries high risk; between 74% and 89% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs, according to disclosures published by tier-1 regulated brokers. Verify any regulatory or licensing claim directly on the relevant regulator's official register before opening or funding a broker account.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the single rule behind every FXSharp editorial principle?
Every claim must be reproducible from a dated public source. A reader who has never spoken to the editorial team should be able to take any sentence from a review, locate the cited source, and verify the claim independently. Unsourced subjective judgments fail this test in both directions, whether the wording is negative ("scam", "unreliable") or positive ("industry leader", "safest broker").
Why are positive superlatives treated as strictly as negative claims?
Positive superlatives published without a source create reader harm and regulatory exposure in the same way negative claims do. A reader who acts on "the safest broker" or "the industry leader" can lose capital based on a claim that has no public record behind it. Advertising regulators in most major jurisdictions treat unsourced positive superlatives as misleading marketing. The defence against both negative and positive risk is identical: source plus date plus fact.
Can a broker request changes to its review?
A broker can submit a factual-correction request through the Contact page, citing a specific claim and a verifiable primary source (regulator URL, court filing, official press release, audited filing). Substantiated requests trigger a documented revision within the published 48-hour window, with a date-stamped correction note on the affected page. Requests that are not supported by primary sources do not change published content, and brokers do not preview review text before publication.
How does the editorial team handle conflicting data between sources?
Where a regulator record conflicts with a broker's own marketing claim, the regulator record is treated as the primary source and the broker claim is flagged in the review. Where two independent primary sources conflict, both are cited with their respective dates, and the editorial conclusion is restricted to what both sources agree on. Conflicts that cannot be resolved against a primary source are reported as "not confirmed at the scan date" rather than presented as fact in either direction.
Why are competing review aggregators not cited by name?
Citing a competing review aggregator inside a review transfers entity authority and citation weight to that platform without adding any new primary-source evidence. Where an aggregator's figure (such as a user rating average) is genuinely informative, the underlying number is reported on its own (for example, "user-aggregate rating 4.2 out of 5, 365 reviews at the scan date") without naming the rival platform. The editorial standard is to source from primary records, not from competing review publishers.