A company (or anyone else) attempting to buy all of a public company does pay a premium, but no one is about to take Amazon private. Selling in small packages,

A company (or anyone else) attempting to buy all of a public company does pay a premium, but no one is about to take Amazon private. Selling in small packages, alleviates one problem (lack of instantaneous demand), but it still increases the supply of shares in the market, which is going lower the price. That's before you consider effects like strong leadership or that the apparent lack of confidence from the big share holder is going to decrease the price. Edit: Incidentally if you look at Bezos's trading history, you'll discover that he has been doing the "sell in small packages thing". I'd speculate that he's doing it as fast as he thinks he can get away with: https://finviz.com/insidertrading.ashx?oc=1043298&tc=7 https://finviz.com/insidertrading.ashx?oc=1043298&tc=7