It's always weird to see that. But it does happen. At 12:43 EDT, Dow Jones was +0.66%, S&P 500 +0.50% and NASDAQ +0.48%, this mainly because of the energy companies getting happier. Why are they getting happier? Because oil prices got a jump of 5%, at $46.97/barrel. What surprises me here is that energy companies are more favored by lower energy prices because they can earn more margins meanwhile letting the price go down because the oil itself is cheaper. But obviously, markets are against my reasoning. Some explications of what that happens would be helpful, and what do you think of this better score of US markets today?
Drillers like oil to be higher. If oil is too low, there's no point in them going to all of the expense and risk of drilling. Refiners and others can be hurt by oil being TOO high, but they tend to move in the same general direction with oil and drillers for the most part. From day to day and intraday, there are any number of forces that may be at work moving markets. Sometimes a top investor making comments or a large institution making a large buy or sell order can influence entire markets that day.
There is an entire ´pipeline´ of energy stocks, and some of them are counter to others. Tankers favor lower prices because there is more volume for them to transfer. Drillers favor higher prices because they need to overcome a threshold to make drilling worthwhile. The part you are missing is they are talking generally of the energy stocks within the Dow. There is ALWAYS money to be made in the energy sector despite the price of oil, you just have to know which companies/industries favor higher or lower prices.