So my question is, why aren't investors bidding up Marvel's price to take advantage of a potential $1.28/shr. instant profit? What am I not considering that other investors clearly are?

I have been really busy lately because of school, but also have noticed this and ended up canceling my limit order on MVL (after I missed it by just 2% to where I would have more than doubled my money!). I think the simple answer to this is that the market in the short-term is unpredictable and most anything can happen. This is my thinking though:

Maybe the price isn't up at $51.13 because investors think that if they invest in DIS the price will still go up and they will make more money. It also might not go up high because the share price of DIS fluctuates in the daily market too. Therefore, what investors will make out of the acquisition will still change each day, so nothing is really certain for the final price until the day of. But I really don't know. There are so many factors that come into play when determining a proper share price that figuring out what it should be is nearly impossible.

I'm just going to go with my original answer and say that the price isn't making much sense because the short-term market is unpredictable.

It's a good question, and I wish I had a better answer!

Aaron