How we cover brokers.

InvestorTrip publishes independent reviews, comparisons, and investigations of online brokers serving retail investors. At the time of this version we cover 99 brokers in our catalogue and maintain 10 best-of guides.

The coverage falls into three formats:

• Broker reviews (/reviews) — one page per broker, sourced from regulator registers and the broker's own published disclosures.
• Best-of comparisons (/best) — curated rankings by use case (beginners, day trading, copy trading, etc.). Rankings are editorially curated; we publish the comparison criteria on each listicle page.
• Investigations — when a broker's public claim is contradicted by the regulator's own register, or a Tier-1 regulator has published an advisory, we publish an Editorial Notice (or, in the strongest cases, an Editorial Expose) on the broker's review page. See Notice categories and Expose criteria below.

Stating what we don't do matters as much as stating what we do. The list is short and load-bearing.

• We do not provide financial advice. InvestorTrip is an information service. We are not licensed to advise on individual investment decisions and we do not.
• We do not currently hold affiliate or referral relationships with any broker reviewed on this site. See Affiliate disclosure below for the full position.
• We do not run a live testing lab. We do not publish "we placed 1,217 real-money trades" or "240 hours of live testing" claims because we have not built that infrastructure. Our reviews are documentation-based — sourced from regulator registers, the broker's own disclosures, and where applicable IOSCO I-SCAN warnings.
• We do not publish under invented identities. We do not invent credentials (CFA, CFP, Series 7) for our authors and we do not name fictitious "experts". Until individual named authors are configured, content carries a collective byline: "By the InvestorTrip Editorial team".
• We do not claim methodology version history we don't have. This page is Version 1.1, published 14 May 2026. There is no "Version 2.4 stable since 2024" history — this is the first published version, and we date it honestly.

Every material claim on InvestorTrip must be defensible against challenge. We sort our sources into four tiers, and we say which tier applies. If we cannot reach the required tier for a specific claim, the claim is not published — we do not soften it with "allegedly" or "reportedly".

When a broker meets a material concern threshold but does not warrant full expose framing, we publish a standard review with an Editorial Notice block at the top of the page. Notices are factual, dated, and sourced. They do not advise the reader to avoid the broker; they describe the situation and let the reader decide.

We currently use six Notice archetypes. Each example below links to a real broker review page where you can see the exact notice in context.

We publish an Editorial Expose (vs. a Notice) when one of the following is true with documented Tier-1 provenance:

1. Regulator-issued warning. A recognised Tier-1 regulator (FCA, CySEC, ASIC, FSCA, BCSC, AMF, CNMV, SEC, CFTC, FMA, FINMA, MAS, and others) has issued a warning, alert, clone-firm advisory, or unauthorized-firm notice about the broker.
2. Licence claim mismatch. The broker advertises a regulatory licence that, on the regulator's own register, is registered to a different entity.
3. Active licence revocation or suspension. The regulator has formally withdrawn, suspended, or cancelled the broker's licence, and the broker continues to operate or display the former licence claim.
4. Operational signals plus complaint mass. Dead-domain status, multiple regulator warnings, and a documented mass of withdrawal-block or scam-pattern complaints (minimum threshold: 10+ complaints across two independent platforms).
5. Sanctions-evading behaviour. The broker is structurally inaccessible to our target audience due to sanctions, and active marketing continues to that audience.

We do not publish an Expose based on a single user complaint, a negative aggregator score (WikiFX, Trustpilot summary), or inference about broker intent.

At the time of this version, TopTrader is the single broker that meets these criteria. The CySEC register shows that the licence the broker claims is held by a different entity (Goldenburg Group Ltd) at a different domain, with the licence under "Voluntary Suspension". This pattern meets Editorial Policy §3.1.2 ("License claim mismatch").

We describe what regulators have said, what registers show, and what events have occurred. We do not pronounce verdicts on broker character or intent.

Regulatory status changes. Domains die. Brokers rebrand. Our content must reflect current reality, not a snapshot from when it was written.

• Quarterly. Every three months, the editorial team re-verifies brokers currently carrying any Editorial Notice (including the Expose category). Each cited regulator URL is re-checked and the "Last reviewed" date is bumped.
• Annual. Once per year, the editorial team conducts a full re-audit of all reviewed brokers against current regulator registers — more thorough than the quarterly cycle, covering fees, products, and operational state.
• Ad-hoc. When a material change becomes public (regulator action, corporate event, licence change), the relevant content is updated within 7 business days of the change becoming known to the editorial team.

We will make errors. When we do, we correct them transparently. The rule has four parts:

1. The error is corrected on the affected page within 24 hours of editorial confirmation.
2. A "Corrections" notice is added to the bottom of the affected page describing what was corrected and when.
3. If the error affected a material claim (regulator status, fee figure, ranking), the correction is also logged in a public corrections log (forthcoming workstream).
4. If the error caused harm to a named entity (a broker), we may notify the entity of the correction.

What we will not do: silent edits, retroactive position-claims, or deletion of content to avoid acknowledging errors.

Affiliate relationships — current state. InvestorTrip does not hold affiliate or referral agreements with any broker reviewed on this site. We do not receive commissions for sign-ups, deposits, or trading volume. There are no affiliate or referral links inside broker reviews, listicles, or any editorial content.

Sponsored content — accepted, and walled off. InvestorTrip accepts paid sponsored content (guest articles) under strict, disclosed conditions. It is a commercial stream structurally separated from editorial work:

• Separate URL stream. Sponsored posts publish under /sponsored/, never under /articles/, /reviews/, or /best/.
• Visible disclosure. Every sponsored page carries a "Sponsored" label above the fold and a disclosure block stating it is paid placement and was not produced by the editorial team.
• Separate byline. Sponsored content never carries a named editorial-team byline and is never attributed to one of our analysts or editors.
• No editorial influence. Sponsorship does not affect broker rankings, review wording, Editorial Notice or Expose decisions, or scoring methodology.
• Not in editorial surfaces. Sponsored content does not appear in the article index, category filters, homepage editorial sections, or (until a real sponsored post exists) the sitemap.

Full terms, quality requirements, and contact routing are published at /guest-posting.

What never happens — regardless of any commercial relationship. We do not boost a broker's ranking because of payment; do not soften criticism, withdraw an Editorial Notice, or drop an Expose in exchange for payment; do not accept "review packages" or "preferred review tiers" from brokers; and do not publish undisclosed sponsorship. If a broker offers payment for favorable editorial coverage, the offer itself becomes a publishable fact under our Expose criteria.

Publishing investigative content invites legal pushback. We are prepared for this. Our internal protocol is:

1. Any cease-and-desist letter, legal threat, or formal complaint is logged immediately and acknowledged in writing within 48 hours. We do not delete content in response to receipt of a letter.
2. The editorial team reviews the contested claim against our internal evidence record (sourced URLs, capture dates, screenshots of regulator pages). If the claim is well-sourced and current, we maintain it. If we find an error, we correct it under the Corrections policy above.
3. A formal response is sent within 14 days, stating our finding on the contested claim, the provenance supporting it, and our willingness to publish the broker's response as a clearly marked statement on the affected page.
4. We may publish a brief note that a broker has formally contested our coverage. This is an editorial decision, not a tit-for-tat.

We do not delete content because we received a strongly-worded letter, modify content silently to avoid attention, or accept settlement-conditioned coverage changes.

Every broker review for a broker offering CFDs or leveraged forex carries a risk disclosure. Trading CFDs, forex, and other leveraged instruments carries substantial risk — between 70% and 85% of retail investor accounts lose money trading CFDs with most regulated providers. The exact figure for any specific broker is published on the broker's own website.

Every review and listicle carries a clear "not financial advice" statement. This is not a fig leaf — it is a real position. We provide information; we do not direct trading decisions. We assume our readers are adults capable of making their own decisions and we treat them that way.

If you believe a specific claim on this site is wrong — particularly a regulator-related claim — we want to hear about it. The most useful kind of feedback carries one of the following:

• A URL to a Tier-1 source (regulator register, regulator press release) that contradicts what we have published.
• A specific broker page URL and the exact sentence you believe is inaccurate.
• For a regulator status change: the date of the change and the regulator URL that documents it.

Contact us via the contact page. We aim to acknowledge corrections-related messages within 48 hours and to make confirmed corrections within 24 hours of confirmation.