Premium bonds winnings and odd pattern

nottsphil

twiglet98 said:

I've held £14 - yes! - since my birth in 1956.  I won £250 in 1965 and £50 in 1975, and nothing since.

It's comforting to occasionally check the list of winning bonds and see that equally tiny holdings do well, sometimes!

That's quite remarkable that you have actually won two not insubstantial sums in no more than 840 draws.
I have held £2 for over 50 years but never won anything, nor expected to. I might not even have been in the draw for years because I believe the units are no longer £2 (or maybe £1).

flaneurs_lobster

nottsphil said:

 I might not even have been in the draw for years because I believe the units or no longer £2 or £1.

No, you're still in. Each premium bond still costs a quid, but these days the minimum purchase amount is 25.

PixelPound

nottsphil said:

twiglet98 said:

I've held £14 - yes! - since my birth in 1956.  I won £250 in 1965 and £50 in 1975, and nothing since.

It's comforting to occasionally check the list of winning bonds and see that equally tiny holdings do well, sometimes!

That's quite remarkable that you have actually won two not insubstantial sums in no more than 840 draws.
I have held £2 for over 50 years but never won anything, nor expected to. I might not even have been in the draw for years because I believe the units are no longer £2 (or maybe £1).

In the most recent draw, a £10 bond bought in Aug 1967 won £10K and a £3 bond bought in Sep 1972 won £5K. In the terms of the £10K winner their total bond holding was just the £10. 

OldScientist

According to the calculator at https://premiumbondsprizes.com/ for someone holding the maximum amount of £50k, there is a 80% chance of winning somewhere between £1100 and £2300 (i.e., an interest rate of between 2.2% and 4.6%) with a median of £1550 (i.e., 3.1% interest rate). In other words, it is not unreasonable to expect one person to win over twice as much as another.

In other words, it is completely reasonable for one person to win a lot more than another over the course of one year. Over 4 years, 80% of winnings will lie between £5350 and £8150, i.e. the ratio of near-best to near-worst declines with time - but it is still not unreasonable for one person to win just over 50% more than another.

Withdrawing the bonds and re-buying them is a complete waste of time.

OldScientist

twiglet98 said:

I've held £14 - yes! - since my birth in 1956.  I won £250 in 1965 and £50 in 1975, and nothing since.

It's comforting to occasionally check the list of winning bonds and see that equally tiny holdings do well, sometimes!

This is equivalent to holding £980 for one year (i.e., 14*60). On current prize (interest) rates, you'd have a 16% chance of winning more than £100 and a 6% chance of more than that. However, I note that in 1965 and 1975 the interest rates were about 7% and 11%, so the probability of winning would have been greater then than now.

Aylesbury_Duck

wadsRtight said:

Came here to say exactly the same as OP. Wife and I each have the maximum allowance in Premium Bonds and have held them for a year. After the first few months wife commented how she was receiving zero or small monthly prizes vs my consistent amounts. By the 6 month mark mine was indicating the expected 3 percent ROI. While wife's looked more like 1 percent. At the 12 month mark we had a count-up. I'm at a bit over 3% ROI, she's at about 1.5%.

I've studied statistics up to a point and know about random numbers, sampling sizes and normal curves. Statistically this feels anomalous. With such a strong pattern established we're not expecting the situation to change and the wife is going to move her holdings elsewhere to get a more assured return.

 As said above, pointless querying this with the monolith that is NS&I. Maybe a real statistician can weigh in here. 

That's a weaker pattern than having a solitary minute of rain in August and concluding that it's been a wet summer.

You are two of 24 million bond-holders, and have entered for just 12 draws.  You own 100,000 of the 128.7bn bonds held. You may well have a pattern on your vanishingly small sample but to conclude it's representative of future outcomes is bizarre.