Deutsche Bank, the bank behind a family of exchange-traded notes marketed by Invesco PowerShares, rolled out two first-to-market inverse ETNs focused on Japanese government bond futures, completing a long pair it launched earlier this year.

The PowerShares DB Inverse Japanese Govt Bond Futures ETN (NYSEArca: JGBS) and the PowerShares DB 3x Inverse Japanese Govt Bond Futures ETN (NYSEArca: JGBD) provide single- and triple-inverse exposure to the dollar performance of the DB USD Inverse JGB Futures Index. That benchmark tracks a notional short position in 10-year JGB futures.

By contrast, their predecessors, the PowerShares DB Japanese Government Bond Futures ETNs, “JGBL” and “JGBT” launched in March, play the Japanese bond futures space from the long side, tracking the DB USD JGB Futures Index, which takes a long position in 10-year JGB futures. They each have gathered $4 million in assets.

JGBS and JGBD, costing annual fees of 0.50 percent and 0.95 percent, respectively, come at a time of an uncertain outlook for Japanese debt. Back in August, Moody’s downgraded Japan’s sovereign debt for the first time since 2002 to reflect the country’s budget deficit and government debt buildup. Still, Japan’s debt rating remains above “A,” a signal that investing in Japanese government bonds is still safe.

The new ETNs are the latest additions to a growing family of bond futures ETNs that include a pair of PowerShares DB German bond notes as well as the PowerShares DB Italian Treasury Bond Futures ETN (NYSEArca: ITLY) and its triple-exposure counterpart, “ITLT.”

Those ETNs have been popular with investors this week, as Italy’s 10-year sovereign debt yields have pushed above 7 percent.

These geared bond futures ETNs, while designed for the more sophisticated investors looking for short-term strategies, are growing in popularity as tools for income diversification at a time of sluggish global economic growth.

“The returns of each ETN are obtained by combining the monthly returns of three times the monthly returns from the short JGB futures index with the returns of the TBill index, less investor fees,” the company said on its website.

ETNs, unlike ETFs that own the underlying physical securities of an index, are senior unsecured debt obligations, and are therefore subject to credit risk; in this case, from Deutsche Bank AG.

The company said the two new ETNs were officially listed on Nov. 9.