How this is written

Every claim is recorded before it is published

Factual claims are not written straight into articles. They go into a research ledger first, with the source behind them, a note on what that source actually supports, and a status:

• Verified — the source supports the claim as written.
• Qualified — the source supports something narrower, and the article’s wording was changed to match it rather than the other way round.
• Editorial — a position we are taking, resolved by precise wording rather than by evidence, and labelled as such.
• Unresolved — still needs a source. An article cannot enter review or publication while one of its claims is unresolved.

The ledger is the single source of truth: an article’s sources are generated from it, not typed in beside them. That stops a citation drifting away from the claim it was supposed to support.

Sources are read, not recalled

Where this site cites a regulator, a central bank or an official document, that document was opened and read. Qualifications travel with the claim: if a figure is a daily average for one month, the article says so; if a regulatory measure was time-limited and later renewed, the article says that rather than presenting it as current law.

We do not invent numbers

This is the rule with the most consequences for a publication about costs. Spreads, commissions and financing rates vary by broker, by instrument, by account type and by hour. A figure quoted here as typical would be wrong for most readers immediately, and a worked example built on invented inputs produces a confident answer to a question nobody asked.

So we explain the mechanism and point you at your own broker’s published numbers. Where an article does show arithmetic, the figures are labelled hypothetical in the text.

No performance, anywhere

No profit or loss figures, no account balances, no returns, no win rates, no equity curves. This extends to illustrations: the images on this site are checked for rising lines, growth curves and anything else that could read as a result, and rejected when they contain one.

Nothing is published without human approval

Articles move through draft, research and review before publication, and the final step is a person approving them by name. The approver and the approval date are recorded on the article. An article cannot be published automatically, and the approval cannot be given twice.

The updated date moves only when the body of an article genuinely changes — never because the site was rebuilt or redeployed.

Commercial links are labelled and contained

The Fill Desk has a commercial relationship. Where a page carries a promotional link it is visibly labelled as promotional, carries rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" so it passes no ranking credit, and is explained on the page it appears on. Promotional placements appear on a minority of articles and only where the subject genuinely connects; there is no sitewide advertising link. The arrangement is set out in full on the commercial disclosure page.

A placement never changes a conclusion. If an article’s argument would be undercut by the promotion sitting next to it, the placement does not go there.

What we say when we do not know

Missing information is shown as missing. Where a figure is unavailable, the page says it is unavailable rather than showing a zero or an estimate. Where we could not verify something, we either leave it out or state the limit of what was checked.

Corrections

Errors get fixed and the change is reflected in the article’s updated date. If you have found one, tell us.