On a Friday in Karachi, Pakistan's benchmark stock index shed 1.3 percent as the ancient anxiety between great powers — this time Washington and Tehran — reminded a smaller, energy-dependent nation how exposed it remains to forces beyond its borders. The retreat was not merely a number; it was a market's honest reckoning with geography and vulnerability, as rising oil prices through the Strait of Hormuz threatened to rekindle inflation in an economy still searching for stable footing. Yet beneath the retreat lay genuine counterweights — record technology exports and a corporate earnings season