The Dow Jones Industrial Average, the world's longest running stock market indicator, underlies two new leveraged exchange-traded funds.

The two new ETFs launched by ProShare Advisors LLC, Short Dow30 ProShares and Ultra Dow30 ProShares, debuted this week on the American Stock Exchange.

The Short Dow30 ProShares and Ultra Dow30 ProShares ETFs are expected to utilise leveraged short and long positions in anticipation of stock market movements. Designed for highly sophisticated active investors, the 'bullish' Ultra Dow30 ProShares aims to achieve twice the daily returns of the underlying index before fees and expenses, and the 'bearish' Short Dow30 ProShares aims to achieve the inverse of daily returns on the Dow Jones Industrial Average before fees and expenses.

'With more than USD 40 billion in assets, The Dow's significance among the investment community on both Wall and Main Street continues to grow. ProShares' new ETFs are the latest in a range of financial products - from mutual funds to ETFs to futures and options - linked to the Dow Jones Industrial Average.' said Michael A. Petronella, President of Dow Jones Indexes/Ventures.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which turned 110 years old on May 26, 2006, is a price-weighted index that measures 30 of the biggest and most widely recognized blue-chip U.S. stocks. Originally created by Charles Dow in 1896 to gauge the new industrial economy, the term 'industrial' is broadly defined so the index accurately reflects the performance of the US stock market today. The 30 companies represent all 10 industries and 18 super sectors of the Industry Classification Benchmark, except for Utilities, which has its own Dow Jones Average.

When The Dow was initially created, its value was calculated by adding up the component stock prices and dividing by the number of components. To calculate the index today, the sum of the stock prices are divided by an index divisor, which is used to adjust for stock splits and other corporate actions that may affect the index's composition.