Premium Bond Winner ?

LeafGreen

After a lean few months things definitely picked up for me... last 6 draws £0, £50, £25, £1300, £100, £300 (on max)
Still only equivalent to about 7% over those 6 months, even with a £1000 prize.   And the return over last 12 months  is now 5%

I am a firm believer that in the long run, the longer you hold bonds and the more of them you have, the closer you will get to the median return.  Deciding to sell after a bad streak is just an emotional decision, give it time and it will even itself out.

Hoenir

Jan - £250
Feb - £200
March - £550
April - £150
May - £25

YTD - £1,175

50k holding

BooJewels

grahamgoo said:

[snip]
I am a firm believer that in the long run, the longer you hold bonds and the more of them you have, the closer you will get to the median return.  Deciding to sell after a bad streak is just an emotional decision, give it time and it will even itself out.

The funny thing is, I've done much better, since I reduced my holding by more than half - it also loosely coincided with them adding more £50 and £100 prizes.  To the extent that I daren't add any more for fear of breaking my decent streak - even though mathematically that's a nonsense.  I've bimbled around 6% return for the last year or so, so that's good enough for me.  I don't realistically expect to win big, I've always had the idea that £1,000 would probably be as good as I might get - £325 was my best month. But when someone fires up Ernie, my bonds have the same chances as everyone else's - they've just got a LOT of competition. 

poppystar

I think PBs bring out all sorts of weird superstitions and beliefs in us because of the random nature of the draws and humans desire to make sense of everything😀.

You should indeed get closer to the median over time but then there’s always the chance of an isolated big win to throw that off course!

I’m not immune as I had one newer, bigger block that was all that ever won for me when the interest rate was low. Once the interest rate increased that block has thrown up no winners which these days seem to be coming from very, very old PBs. So any theory of the value of big blocks went out of the window. 

Though I do like the fun of all this speculating and waiting and am lucky enough to be able to keep funds in PBs. My return is not as high as @BooJewels but better than EA accounts once the tax free nature is taken into consideration. 

BooJewels

That's all true @poppystar - I mentioned in an earlier post that one batch of £10k has yielded twice as many winners than the other batch of £10k - so it's always felt 'luckier'.  But all that actually proves is that it truly is random.  Random in itself will throw up patterns - that we tend to interpret as something else.

I haven't even factored in the no tax, that definitely gives my PBs an edge, especially when the basic true return is around 6%.  I've always considered my PB holding as my dire emergency fund - whilst you can get at the funds pretty easily, it feels a bit more final than moving money between EA accounts - so they tend to feel more like a fix or notice account, so I generally leave them be.

RedImp_2

£175 on full so ok month.
3.5% YTD

Ifts

£100 on 13.4k holding (same prize amount as last month)   

pbryd

Jan - £75
Feb - £200
March - £150
April - £50
May - £75

YTD - £550

Holding £12,550

4.58% return on my original £12k

huw01

£400 this month, 4 prizes of £100
on a full holding
Rolling 12 month total is £1700

This month really has bumped up the 12 month

Macsidia

£200 for May, (2x £50, 1x £100) on just over £42K. Big relief since I was on a hat-trick of blanks.

Total for the year so far is £500. Still well below the average expected return.