@mexxico thank you for your communications.
While you're looking into the economy/trade issues, I'd like to bring one thing to your attention: That is that the "Whole seller" perk was working but broke some time ago. The prices of the items in your inventory would be colored red/green to indicate whether you would sell at a loss/profit. This was somehow broken about 2 months ago. Whatever broke it might also have broken the "Appraiser" perk. I am not sure whether the discount is working.
Having this fixed would go a long way to making Trade a more enjoyable strategy and I would think it would be "low hanging fruit" since it was once working.
There is a documented issue
here.
Also, for clarification, there was a second issue related to this perk even when it was working and that is that the trade history was lost between game loads. I believe there was an attempt to address this at around the time it broke so maybe the big is related.
Also, as I noted in that problem thread, it may be intentionally a play on words, or it may be just an English as a second language thing but the correct term for this would be "Wholesaler".
Thanks again.