When Barron’s “Economic Beat” columnist Gene Epstein read a television headline about an “Oil Price Shock,” he decided to respond.

[L]ast week, gasoline prices at the pump were down to $2.012 a gallon nationwide, 62 cents cheaper than at the same point last year. And according to estimates by Renaissance Macro Research economics head Neil Dutta, the lower gasoline price equates to an annual savings for consumers of $85 billion. The folks at CNBC may call that a shock, but “holiday gift” is more like it.

Last week’s fall in the oil price to $36 a barrel—below $40 for the first time in six years—prompted the usual stories in the media that emphasized the negative more than the positive. Let’s acknowledge the pain inflicted in the energy patch by lower prices, including the plunge in the price of natural gas, plus the collateral damage to creditors of the energy producers.

But it bears repeating that, for most of us, the net effect of cheaper energy equates to a chocolate Santa in our Christmas stocking. And not just for us, but for the stock market generally.

With the help of Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at S&P Dow Jones Indices, I have compiled an “S&P 460,” the Standard & Poor’s 500 excluding the 40 stocks in the energy subcomponent.

These 40 comprise not just oil producers like ExxonMobil and Chevron , but also natural-gas producers like Kinder Morgan , coal producers like Consol Energy , and equipment and service providers like Transocean and Schlumberger .

Not surprisingly, from the close of June 30 last year, when the oil price was at an annual high of $105, to the close of Dec. 10, 2015, when the oil price hit $37, the energy index of 40 stocks plunged by 37%.

Over this same period of nearly 1½ years, the S&P 500 rose by a modest 4.7%. But what if an investor had been prescient enough to limit his long position to the 460—the stocks excluding energy? Since these companies are buyers of energy rather than sellers, they would have been helped rather than hurt by cheaper energy prices, in some cases quite noticeably.

Overall, our S&P 460 saw gains since June 30, 2014, of 9.8%, more than twice as great as the S&P 500 over this period.