ByteDance expert Leto's idea of making 30 million yuan by buying hard drives on PDD is dismantled! 1、 Core idea: 'Abnormal life' needs to be considered. If the things you often buy have inexplicably increased in price, ask one more question: Who earned this money? 2、 The architecture for big shots to make money (deep learning): Step 1: Transform daily anomalies into trend signals Step 2: Find the core beneficiaries of the industrial chain Step 3: Use the 13F report to verify the organization's attitude Step 4: Review and Methodology 3、 Methodology of how big shots make money (in-depth reading) How can two Pinduoduo hard drives lead to an investment that earns several times the profit Last year, in order to build a personal quantification platform, I placed an order for two Seagate high-capacity mechanical discs on Pinduoduo. This was originally an ordinary consumption, but it has become the starting point for my research on the storage sector in the past two years. Here is how I traced the clues of "abnormal life" and used data to verify the investment logic step by step. Step 1: Transform daily anomalies into trend signals A few days after receiving the hard drive, I found that the same model and store frequently adjusted prices in a short period of time, and only increased without decreasing. For an industrial product that is highly standardized and has sufficient production capacity, a one-way increase in retail prices is very unusual. I used a price comparison tool to pull out the price curves of several high-capacity models of Seagate and Western Digital, and found that it was not a single model fluctuation, but the entire high-capacity product line was continuously increasing in price in one direction. This indicates that there is a deeper macro imbalance behind it. Step 2: Find the core beneficiaries of the industrial chain Following the clues, the logic gradually became clear: at that time, the market focused on the demand for AI graphics cards, but the massive data generated by large model training and inference required low-cost, long-term storage media. This type of medium is mainly enterprise level high-capacity mechanical hard drives known as Nearline, which are being heavily purchased by cloud providers such as Google and Amazon. Due to manufacturers such as Seagate prioritizing the supply of high profit enterprise orders with limited production capacity, the supply from the retail end is squeezed, thereby transmitting the price increase effect to the consumer end. Step 3: Use 13F report to verify the attitude of the verification organization After the logic closed loop, I bought a bottom position around $150, but to increase the position on a large scale, I need to confirm the judgment of professional funds. I choose to observe the 13F (institutional position disclosure) trend for one to two quarters. Data shows that the number of institutions holding Seagate has increased from over 800 in the second half of 2024 to over 1200 in the third quarter of 2025, and the number of institutions building new warehouses is increasing quarter by quarter. This indicates that this is not a short-term bet by one or two funds, but rather a continuous influx of mainstream funds. 4/[Review and Methodology] From $150 at the time of purchase to around $965 for Seagate now, this transaction has brought good returns. But objectively speaking, there is a strong 'survivorship bias' here, and I have also missed the signal. The value of this approach lies in providing a logical framework for systematizing "everyday common sense" into "investment decisions": one ⃣ Pay attention to daily anomalies: price fluctuations, stock shortages, or queues often occur before the financial report. two ⃣ Pull out curve verification: Determine whether it is short-term noise or a long-term, structural trend. three ⃣ Search for core targets: Find companies that can directly benefit and are in key positions in the industry chain. four ⃣ Using 13F filtering: observe whether professional funds are continuously and widely buying. Next time the things you often buy increase in price for no reason, why not ask: Who made this money?