A fall below 10,000 this week in the Dow Jones Industrial Average -- before Tuesday’s late-afternoon rally -- shows that equities are on shaky ground right now. But in my experience, there’s always a bull market somewhere, and I’ve found what I think is at least a mini-bull in U.S. Treasury bonds.

The European debt crisis has prompted a flight to quality that has been obvious in intermediate- and long-term Treasury bonds. As you can see by the chart below of the iShares Barclays 7-10 Year Treasury Fund (IEF), the intermediate bond sector has raced higher during recent weeks.

In fact, the buying in Treasury bonds has been so fierce that I recently recommended IEF to subscribers of my High Monthly Income advisory service. I chose this fund rather than other intermediate- and long-term bond funds because I think it gives you the best opportunity to profit from conditions in the Treasury bond market. This intermediate-term bond ETF has enjoyed a very healthy run higher since early April. The gains in IEF now have the fund trading well above both its short- and long-term moving averages.

When you own IEF, you get a fund that seeks to approximate the total rate of return of the intermediate-term sector of the U.S. Treasury market as defined by the Barclays Capital U.S. 7-10 Year Treasury Bond Index. That index is market-cap weighted, and it includes U.S. Treasuries that have remaining maturities of between seven and 10 years. These are non-convertible, BBB- or better bonds as rated by Standard & Poor’s.

Perhaps the most attractive aspect of the intermediate-term Treasuries is that the United States does not have the same kind of debt issues as struggling European countries such as Greece, Portugal and Spain (at least not yet). And while I am not particularly bullish on Treasury bonds in the long run, I do think that right now U.S. bonds have become the go-to port in the storm for income investors around the world who are anxious about the prospect of sovereign debt defaults. This kind of global worry should be viewed as a signal that it may be worth investing a portion of your assets in intermediate-term U.S. Treasuries to let you take shelter from the current market turmoil.

As usual, I do not recommend that you buy IEF or any investment without a protective stop loss in place. To get my latest ETF advice and my recommended stop price for IEF, you should consult my High Monthly Income trading service.

If you want my advice about buying and selling specific ETFs, including appropriate stop losses, please sign up for my ETF Trader service. As always, I am happy to answer your questions about ETFs, so do not hesitate to email me by clicking here. You may see your question answered in a future ETF Talk.