Sprucing Up the 'Clean Stocks' List

Can investors ever prove that a stock is clean?

Probably not. No matter how hard you research a company, you can never produce a 100% guarantee that someone -- the CEO, the accountants, the board -- isn't conspiring to fake the quarter's numbers. In fact, if there's a company out there without even a tiny skeleton in management's closet, I've yet to meet up with it.

That's why I launched my Clean Stocks project as a collaborative effort between myself and readers to build a list of stocks that investors can trust. Putting a company through tests like those that readers and I have developed exposes a company's character. I couldn't ask for a better illustration of a company with great character than T. Rowe Price(TROW Quote).

Every day brings a new disclosure that some mutual fund company sold out its shareholders by letting hedge fund managers and other professional investors make money by buying and selling shares of their funds after the stock market had closed. Obviously, I can't be 100% sure that T. Rowe Price isn't part of the scandal. But I'm as certain as one can get that I can trust the company when it says it isn't part of that mess.

Officials from the mutual fund company have said from nearly day one that they aren't part of the scandal, and I believe them. And judging from my email, so do the readers of this column.

I had three stocks to choose from for this round -- T. Rowe Price, Stryker (SYK Quote) and Equifax (EFX Quote). Of the three, Equifax didn't make the cut. The next round's nominees are Trustmark (TRMK Quote), Southwest Airlines (LUV Quote) and Walgreens (WAG Quote).

But now on to this round's selections.