I do think merchant inventory should reset (as said in the loading tip). Although I've never checked if they do reset and at what frequency.
First of all, it's not instant so you always have the possibility of buying again something you sold by error.
Second, the game as tons of 'junk' items and this would slow your save/load considerably by the end-point if it's all left in the save data (think how many weapon and armor Raedric hold has alone)
And last, I can't even browse the inventory of the merchants I usually go to for the items I may want because they have hundreds of junk item in their inventory hiding the things I actually may want to buy =/