AMC Entertainment (AMC  ) invested $30 million in Hycroft Mining, a Nevada gold and silver miner for a 22% stake. The move was especially surprising considering the lack of connection between AMC's business and gold mining. Apparently, the move was triggered by Hycroft's CEO contacting Adam Aron, AMC's CEO about some advice on raising its stock price.

In a statement, Aron said, "Our strategic investment being announced today is the result of our having identified a company in an unrelated industry that appears to be just like AMC of a year ago. It, too, has rock-solid assets, but for a variety of reasons, it has been facing a severe and immediate liquidity issue."

AMC has had quite the journey over the last few years. Movie attendance has been trending lower for a few reasons. People simply have way more entertainment options. TVs at home are getting bigger and better which means going to the movies no longer seems like a special experience. The rise of streaming also means that people have so much to watch, especially with many films being immediately available or shortly available.

It led to the stock's underperformance and bankruptcy rumors even prior to the pandemic, leading it to become a popular short on Wall Street. And, its fortunes sagged even more during the pandemic for obvious reasons. However, there was an unforeseen stroke of luck as Redditors and other traders piled into the stock with hopes of engineering a short squeeze like Gamestop (GME  ).

The stock price climbed by nearly 35x between January 2021 and June 2021. Since this peak, it's down by 79%, although it's still more than 7x its January low. AMC took advantage of its inflated stock price by issuing more stock and raising more than $2 billion in the process. This gave the company a longer lifeline and helped it pay off some of its more onerous obligations.

There's also been speculation about how AMC will deploy this cash. So, there was certainly some surprise when it announced that it was going to be investing in a very obscure, gold miner. Already, there is considerable skepticism especially as the options market is showing that people were buying calls at a much higher than normal rate, indicating that someone was acting on insider information.

While this might cause a short-term spike in AMC, it's unlikely to change the company's trajectory. It might cause some investors to lose faith in management as they stray further from their core competency.