After the frantic price swings of companies like GameStop and AMC Entertainment tantalized the financial world last week, everyone wondered what the army of internet investors would set its sights on next.

The answer, at least briefly, seemed to be silver.

Over the weekend, the precious metal experienced a surge of interest along with an uptick in online chatter about the chances for generating the kind of price spike that grabbed the world’s attention last week.

On Monday, the price of silver jumped as much as 11.5 percent in early trading — to the highest level in eight years — but gravity soon took hold, pulling it back down as efforts to rally users of Reddit’s influential Wall Street Bets forum failed to take hold.

By midmorning, silver had given up some of its early gains, and at 3 p.m., the price was $29.418 per ounce, a 9 percent increase. That was still around its highest level since early 2013.

On Wall Street Bets, where users have overwhelmingly backed GameStop and put pressure on hedge funds, some users dismissed the nascent online crusade for silver as a way to rob the GameStop rally of its momentum.

Some posters described it as a trap set by hedge funds that are losing money on the rise of GameStop, and urged their fellow traders to keep their attention on firms that had shorted shares of the video-game retailer.

GameStop vs. Wall Street

Let Us Help You Understand

• • Shares in GameStop, the video game retailer, have soared because amateur investors, starting on Reddit, have bet heavily on shares of the company.
  • The wave gained momentum in response to large hedge funds short selling GameStop stock — basically they were betting against the company’s success.
  • The sudden demand has driven up the share price from less than $20 in December to around $300 on Monday. On paper, anyway.
  • It’s not just GameStop. Amateur investors have backed other companies that many big investors had shunned, such as AMC and BlackBerry.
  • This bubble around GameStop forced big investors to raise money to cover their losses, or dump shares of other companies.

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