Is the Silver Rally Over? Tavi Costa Breaks Down the Selloff

Published: 06-23-2026, 12:46 pm

Key Takeaways

• Silver dropped more than 4% on June 17, 2026. Miners had already run 25–30% in four sessions. The pullback was due regardless of Warsh.

• Three bullish signals held through the selloff: miners held relative to spot, copper stayed resilient, and 10-year Treasury yields fell rather than rose.

• The US Dollar Index (DXY) strengthening is the one real headwind. Emerging markets holding up suggests the dollar move may be short-lived.

• Warsh’s hawkish debut follows a well-established pattern. Incoming Fed chairs use their first press conference to establish inflation-fighting credibility. Watch what the data forces him to do — not what he implied on day one.

• The structural case for silver is unchanged. Industrial demand plus monetary demand in a purchasing power erosion environment remains intact.

Silver just took a beating. Kevin Warsh gave his first press conference as Federal Reserve Chair on June 17, 2026, and precious metals sold off hard.

Silver dropped more than 4% in a single session. Gold fell too — but silver absorbed the bigger hit.

So investors are asking the obvious question: is the silver rally over?

Tavi Costa is co-founder and CEO of Azoria Capital. He sat down with GoldSilver anchor Maggie Lake the day after the move to answer exactly that.

What followed was one of the more systematic breakdowns of a metals selloff you’ll hear. No cheerleading, no empty reassurance — just a methodical walk through every signal the market was sending, the bullish ones and the bearish ones.

Here’s what he said.

Was the Silver Selloff Really About Warsh?

Before anything else, get this straight: the pullback was mathematically overdue.

In the four trading sessions heading into the Warsh press conference, silver miners had climbed 25 to 30%. That’s an extraordinary move in a very short time. Nothing goes up that fast without setting up a reversal. The only question was what would trigger it.

“Nothing moves 25% and doesn’t see a three to four to 5% pullback,” Costa said. “That would be normal to see.”

Without Warsh, this same correction would have been called “sell the news.” Markets took profits. Normal. A hawkish debut from a new Fed chair then landed on top of an already overextended move. That made an ordinary pullback look like a verdict on the silver thesis.

It isn’t one.

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Is Kevin Warsh Actually More Hawkish Than Jerome Powell?

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) voted 12-0 to hold rates steady at 3.5%–3.75% at the June 17 meeting. Warsh stripped forward guidance from the policy statement. He declined to submit his own dot plot projection. And he made price stability the centerpiece of his message: “We’ve missed on inflation for five years and we’re going to fix that.” Markets read all of that as a hawkish signal and sold accordingly.

But Costa flagged something the current commentary is largely ignoring.

The crowd calling Warsh the new inflation hawk? They said the exact same thing about Jerome Powell when Powell first took the chair. The framing was identical — and the certainty just as strong. Word for word.

“The same people that are coming out now putting out tweets saying that I like Kevin Warsh were also the same people that were saying exactly that about Powell,” Costa said.

History is worth paying attention to here. Citi noted ahead of the June meeting that incoming Fed chairs routinely use their first press conference to establish hawkish credibility.

The average selloff in the 2-year Treasury at a new chair’s first meeting runs about 6 basis points. For comparison, it averages just over 1 basis point at a typical FOMC meeting. In other words, first-meeting hawkishness is a structural playbook — not necessarily a policy commitment.

What matters is what the incoming data forces Warsh to do over the following months. The debut press conference is a posture, not a promise.

Costa’s advice: let it cool. Watch what Warsh actually does, not what he sounded like on day one.

What Are the Market Signals Saying About Silver Right Now?

Rather than reacting to the headline, Costa walked through the market internals from June 17. Four signals stood out — and three of them cut against the panic narrative.

Miners held up relative to spot. This is the most important signal. When a metals selloff is genuinely systemic, miners lead the decline. They amplify the move to the downside.

That didn’t happen on June 17. Silver and gold miners held their ground relative to spot prices. That’s a bullish divergence. It tells you the longer-term institutional bid stayed in place beneath the surface volatility.

Copper stayed resilient. Precious metals and copper tend to move together when macro stress is the driver. If both fall simultaneously, it signals something broader and more worrying. But when silver drops while copper holds, the silver move looks more like profit-taking than a structural reversal.

10-year Treasury yields fell, not rose. This is the counterintuitive one — and the most telling. If markets genuinely believed Warsh was about to tighten aggressively, 10-year Treasury yields should have climbed. They didn’t.

They fell. A central bank that markets actually believe will tighten pushes yields higher. The fact that yields moved the other way suggests the market isn’t convinced the hawkish posture will translate into real action.

Strait of Hormuz supply flows were picking up. Rising energy prices from the Iran conflict had been a key driver of the inflation narrative all along. Signs that energy supply through the Strait of Hormuz was beginning to normalize suggest the inflationary pressure may ease on its own — without the Fed needing to act.

Does a Strong Dollar Mean Silver Prices Will Keep Falling?

Costa was equally honest about the genuine risk — and it deserves the same attention as the bullish signals.

The US Dollar Index (DXY) measures the dollar’s strength against a basket of six major currencies including the euro, yen, and pound. On June 17, it was breaking out to short-term highs.

A stronger dollar is a real headwind for silver and gold. Both metals are priced in dollars globally. When the dollar rises, metals become more expensive for foreign buyers — which reduces demand.

“The dollar — that’s the biggest issue we’re seeing today,” Costa said.

The nuance here matters though. A daily chart breakout is a different animal from a monthly one. Costa distinguished between the two clearly. A short-term dollar pop is noise — a sustained multi-week rally is a problem.

And the countervailing signal was hard to ignore: emerging market currencies held up well during the same session. A truly systemic dollar surge tends to hit emerging markets hard. It didn’t. That suggests this was positioning rather than a structural shift in dollar demand.

Worth watching. Not worth panicking over. Yet.

How Did a Professional Investor Handle the Selloff?

This matters — not because anyone should mirror someone else’s decisions, but because it shows what disciplined long-term thinking looks like in practice.

Costa didn’t panic sell. He also didn’t rush to buy the dip. Instead, he had already trimmed his exposure into the 25–30% rally.

Taking gains off the table as the move accelerated was the plan. When the selloff came, he was sitting on more cash than usual. He added to Brazilian stocks recently, which he acknowledged was probably a little early. And he is watching for confirmation before adding back to metals.

“I’m waiting for a bit more confirmation before I come in and add more to my position,” Costa said. “I’m not panicking — just watching things closely.”

That’s the framework in action. Trim into strength. Raise cash.

Then wait for the market to show its hand before redeploying capital. No heroics in either direction.

The Bigger Picture: Is the Dollar Still a Safe Haven?

Zoom all the way out and there’s a more important question underneath all of this.

The assumption that the dollar is the world’s default safe haven is newer than most people realize. It’s roughly a two-to-three decade construct, taking hold in earnest during the 1990s and 2000s. In the 1970s, the playbook ran completely differently.

Bonds didn’t function as defensive assets through that decade of persistent inflation. The dollar didn’t protect purchasing power either. Physical gold and silver were the safe havens — they were the only major assets that held real value while paper instruments eroded.

“If we go back to the 1970s — it wasn’t that way,” Costa said. “The safe haven was metals.”

The question worth sitting with: are we moving back toward that regime?

The structural trap facing the Fed today has meaningful parallels to the 1970s bind. Inflation has run above the Fed’s 2% target for five consecutive years, according to Warsh himself at the June press conference. Aggressive tightening risks damaging an economy carrying far more debt than in previous cycles. The result is a central bank that is structurally constrained — which is precisely the environment where physical metals have historically done their best work.

Silver sits at a particularly interesting intersection of this thesis. It’s an industrial metal with structural demand from solar panels, electric vehicles, and electronics.

About 60% of annual silver consumption is tied to industrial end uses, according to BlackRock’s 2026 outlook. And it’s a monetary metal with thousands of years of purchasing power history behind it. If the monetary regime is shifting back toward the 1970s playbook, silver has two engines running simultaneously.

The Warsh selloff hasn’t changed a single element of that structural case.

What Should Silver Investors Watch in the Coming Weeks?

Three specific things are worth tracking as the dust settles.

The dollar is the most important near-term variable. Watch whether the US Dollar Index (DXY) breakout from mid-June sustains or reverses. A reversal removes the most credible short-term headwind for silver.

Keep watching the miners relative to spot price. They remain the best real-time barometer of institutional conviction. If miners continue holding their ground — or lead the next leg higher — the structural bid is intact.

Pay attention to what Warsh’s inflation framework task force actually proposes. One of the five task forces announced at the June 17 meeting is focused specifically on how the Fed measures inflation. If methodological changes bring headline inflation toward target without reducing real-world price pressures, purchasing power erosion continues. And that’s the structural engine driving long-term metals demand regardless of what the official numbers say.

Tavi goes deeper in the full conversation with Maggie Lake. He covers the specific levels he’s watching before adding back, his thinking on the gold/silver ratio, and why he moved into Brazilian stocks during the same session. Watch the full video here.

People Also Ask

Is the silver rally over after the Fed’s June 2026 meeting?

Not according to the market signals. Silver miners held up relative to spot price on the day of the selloff. That’s the opposite of what happens when institutional investors are genuinely abandoning a thesis. Macro strategist Tavi Costa of Azoria Capital breaks down why the pullback was overdue regardless of Warsh — and what he’s watching before adding back — in his full conversation with GoldSilver’s Maggie Lake.

Why did silver drop after Kevin Warsh’s first press conference?

Silver miners had already surged 25–30% over just four trading sessions before the June 17 FOMC meeting. A pullback was mathematically likely regardless of the Fed. Warsh’s hawkish tone amplified an already overextended move. But three key signals — miners holding relative to spot, copper staying resilient, and the Strait of Hormuz flows normalizing — suggest this was profit-taking, not a structural reversal.

What does a stronger US dollar mean for silver prices?

A rising US Dollar Index (DXY) is a headwind for silver because the metal is priced in dollars globally. When the dollar strengthens, silver becomes more expensive for foreign buyers, which reduces demand. A short-term daily breakout is different from a sustained multi-week rally, however, and emerging markets held up well during the same session. Track the DXY over the coming weeks: a reversal removes the most credible near-term pressure on silver prices.

Should I buy silver after the Warsh selloff?

That depends entirely on your time horizon and risk tolerance — this article isn’t financial advice. What Tavi Costa did personally was trim into the prior rally, sit on cash, and wait for confirmation before redeploying capital. The structural case for silver — industrial demand from solar, EVs, and electronics, plus monetary demand in a purchasing power erosion environment — hasn’t changed. You can hear Costa’s full thinking on entry levels and positioning in his full conversation with GoldSilver anchor Maggie Lake.

Is Kevin Warsh more hawkish than Jerome Powell?

It’s too early to say based on one press conference. Citi’s analysis shows that new Fed chairs consistently use their first meeting to establish hawkish credibility.

The 2-year Treasury sells off an average of 6 basis points at a new chair’s debut, compared to just over 1 basis point at a typical meeting. Moreover, the same analysts now calling Warsh hawkish made identical calls about Powell in 2018. What matters is what the incoming inflation and employment data force Warsh to actually do — not what his first press conference implied.

SOURCES
1. PBS NewsHour — Kevin Warsh holds first news conference after leaving interest rate unchanged
2. CNBC — Fed meeting recap: Warsh announces task forces to overhaul major Federal Reserve operations
3. StockTitan — Fed Holds Rates June 2026; Dot Plot Flips to a Hike
4. Federal Reserve — Chairman Warsh Press Conference Transcript, June 17, 2026
5. BlackRock — Gold & Silver: Prices, Volatility, What’s Next
6. GoldSilver — Live Gold and Silver Price Charts

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Always consult a qualified financial advisor before making investment decisions.

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