ProShares launched Thursday four pairs of leveraged and inverse ETFs offering 300 percent inverse and leveraged exposure to a group of popular U.S. indexes.

By design, the funds will magnify the daily performance of the most traded U.S. broad equity indexes by giving investors 300 percent or -300 percent returns on these benchmarks on a daily basis. The funds invest primarily on cash and cash instruments and are intended for short-term strategies only.

One of the debuting pairs—the UltraPro QQQ (Nasdaq: TQQQ) and the UltraPro Short QQQ (Nasdaq: SQQQ)—is tied to the Nasdaq-100 Index. The ETFs are listed on the Nasdaq exchange.

The other three pairs of 3x and -3x leveraged funds will be listed on the NYSEArca board. They are:

Long:

• UltraPro Dow 30 (NYSEArca: UDOW)
• UltraPro MidCap400 (NYSEArca: UMDD)
• UltraPro Russell2000 (NYSEArca: URTY)

Short:

• UltraPro Short Dow 30 (NYSEArca: SDOW)
• UltraPro Short MidCap400 (NYSEArca: SMDD)
• UltraPro Short Russell2000 (NYSEArca: SRTY)

The funds will join ProShares' other leveraged plays offering 300 percent and -300 percent of the daily performance of the S&P 500 that were launched last year on the NYSE Arca: UPRO and SPXU. Both these funds have attracted already more than $100 million in assets. As with the existing ETFs, the new products come with fees pegged at 95 basis points.

There are numerous other leveraged and inverse products in the market, but ProShares' lineup is the first to give 300 percent and -300 percent returns on those particular indexes. Its main competition will likely come from newcomer Direxion, which has seen remarkable success with its own family of 300 percent leveraged and inverse ETFs, some of which are plays on similar segments of the market.

Click on each fund's symbol to view its prospectus.