They don't carry a large amount of money on hand trades consists of exchanges of goods as or more often than for gold.
Merchants don't have the kind of money for armor only a noble could afford. Morrowind has a lot of economic quirks that don't make sense via standard game logic. But if you do consider this cheating, then simply don't use this mod. Only requires Morrowind.esm and I made sure to clean it.I don't really consider this a cheat, but rather more of a convenience and time saver. Optional file for 1 hour reset in case you don't want to lose the extra gold that the merchant made off your purchase right away.All I did was change the fBarterGoldResetDelay game setting to 0 (or 1 for optional file).
Makes merchant gold reset to default amount instantly instead of having to wait 24 hours.