Health care may be a good place for investors to camp out and wait until the market begins to really show some sings of a solid recovery, and exchange traded funds (ETFs) can offer a decent shelter.

This bear market has been an exceptional one, and equity investors are left with virtually no place to hide out. Stocks are still in dangerous territory, as recent performance of the S&P 500 has proved. Investment News believes that for those investors who are reluctant to give up equities altogether, there are opportunities within health care-related ETFs.

Health care has generally been viewed as a defensive sector, meaning that health care sector stocks have held up better than the overall stock market during major bear markets. The current bear market is no exception. People are just not going to stop needing health care, and the majority are not going to go without decent coverage. For this reason alone, many profits within this sector remain.

Of the dozen or so U.S.-based health care ETFs, the performance is has been equal over the past three and five years. Also, what the health care industry and ETFs have going for them is a solid population of aging baby boomers in the United States.

• iShares Dow Jones U.S. Health Care Sector Index Fund (IYH): down 7.8% year-to-date

• Vanguard Health Care (VHT): down 7.5% year-to-date

Tags: Health Care, IYH, S&P 500, Sector ETFs, VHT