He's actually just an embarrassment as a merchant/trader. Like, I get haggling as a hard bar, especially for his character, that's definitely a skillset to work on. But, after all this time, he's basically still trading like a tourist. Not doing any R&D on market prices before just buying stuff as he casually meanders around. Not trying to corroborate pricing he heard from the guild while in the market (maybe the pepper is even cheaper, the silk even more expensive, etc). Not asking about price history/drift. Some stuff is cheaper or more expensive because of the unrest, what's the price generally before the conflict, how long the conflict looks to go on, what stuff is going to get scarce, etc etc.