Bank of America has promoted Egypt to the leading spot on its emerging markets screen, highlighting improved earnings, more favorable valuations and stronger price momentum. The move, announced on Thursday, leaves Turkey and South Africa retained within the bank's top three markets.
According to the bank's quantitative screening, Egypt now posts the highest return on equity of any emerging market in its universe. Peru and the United Arab Emirates follow Egypt in the ROE ranking.
In contrast, Turkey continues to register the largest equity risk premium in the global sample. Korea, Greece and the UAE rank next, in that order, for equity risk premium.
Bank of America's top-20 stock screen contains 11 names from South Africa spanning seven different markets. Materials and financials account for the bulk of the selections on that list. The three highest-ranked individual stocks on the screen are Northam Platinum, Tupras and Momentum Group.
On macro policy expectations, the bank anticipates three consecutive Federal Reserve rate increases beginning in September. Bank of America states that this expected tightening more than offsets any supportive effects from recent US-Iran developments and from lower oil prices. The bank also projects the US dollar will reach its peak in the third quarter of 2026.
Regional and valuation notes from the screening show Gulf Cooperation Council markets continuing to sit at the lower end of the emerging markets ranking. Within valuation metrics, Poland is identified as the most expensive market on both enterprise value-to-sales and price-to-book measures. Czechia leads on price-to-earnings, while Greece records the highest EV/EBITDA.
These quantitative rankings and sector concentrations highlight where the bank's systematic screen finds relative strength and stress across emerging markets, with particular concentration in South African materials and financials and notable valuation dispersion across European and Gulf markets.