Merchant sales lists: where are they?

[Yukichigai]

Short and to the point: what controls the items that merchants sell? Some of it is inventory, true, but as much of it as I can find seems to just magically appear. I have no idea, for example, what generates the sales inventory for the Caravan merchants at all, much less for when they've been invested in.

[Yossarian22]

Merchants are linked to a container reference somewhere in the world. In This container is their sell stock. You could place such a container everywhere in the world, so sometimes they are hard to find. But mostly they are placed close to a Merchant location. You can figure out where they are by clicking on the merchant and go to the tab "merchant container".