SUMMARY
The investigation of the stochastic behavior of financial series has become widespread over the literature. There is empirical and theoretical evidence that the total stock price change over a long period is usually concentrated in the a few hectic runs of trading days. The drawdown is a random variable which provides information on alternative characteristics of market behavior during these periods. In this work, we use distributions from extreme value theory to model the severity of drawdowns and drawups. We illustrate using nine currency exchange rates and gold.