The stock market isn't doing much a day after President Obama basically thumbed his nose at the Republican opposition. But the Dow Jones industrials ($INDU) are down because of one thing he proposed: a boost in the minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $9.

That's pulled shares of McDonald's (MCD) lower -- and a number of fast-food restaurant stocks as well -- because all depend on cheap labor. If Congress were to agree to the minimum wage boost -- which is unlikely -- the 24.1% increase will boost their costs. And all have had to deal with higher food costs in the last year.

Mickey D's was down $1.31 to $93.79 Wednesday afternoon, subtracting 10 points from the Dow. That has more than offset the nice gain General Electric (GE) was enjoying after Tuesday's announcement that GE is selling its remaining interest in NBC Universal to Comcast (CMCSA). GE was up 74 cents to $23.32, adding 6 points to the Dow.

The reason McDonald's is weighing on the Dow is its price. The Dow is a price-weighted index. The higher the stock price, the more it influences the index. McDonald's stock price is the fifth highest among the 30 Dow stocks, after IBM (IBM), Chevron (CVX), 3M (MMM) and Caterpillar (CAT). GE's price is the sixth lowest, ahead of Alcoa (AA), Bank of America (BAC), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Cisco Systems (CSCO) and Intel (INTC).

Meanwhile, shares of Burger King Worldwide (BKW), Jack in the Box (JACK), Yum! Brands (YUM), the owner of KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut, and Sonic (SONC) were all lower as well.

• Is a minimum-wage hike a jump-start or job killer?

Not all of the declines were due to the minimum wage increase proposal. Some was due to a 0.1% increase in retail sales in January. The increase was in line with economist estimates but still seemed to weigh on the market.

That's because most analysts believe retail sales were held back by a 2 percentage increase in the Social Security tax rate to 6.2% from 4.2%. The 6.2% had been trimmed to 4.2% in 2011 and 2012 to help boost the economy. The 6.2% rate was first established in 1990.

That's partly true, says money manager Hugh Johnson of Hugh Johnson Advisors in Albany, N.Y. Another factor weighing on retail sales may be that income-tax refunds were delayed because of wrangling over taxes between the Obama administration and Congress, he said.

So, the availability of tax forms was held up, and the Internal Revenue Service said it wouldn't start to process returns until February. That may have trimmed some $9 billion in sales out of the economy.

There's a last issue with McDonald's specifically.

The stock had been outperforming the Dow since early December and hit $96.32 on Feb. 1, the same the Dow had its first close above 14,000 since October 2007. If its 14-day relative strength index is any indication, the shares had become overbought. RSI is a measure of stock-price momentum. A reading above 70 suggests a stock is overbought. On Feb. 1, McDonald's RSI was 83. It was in the low 60s on Wednesday.

More on Top Stocks

• Will Amazon drop 30% like Apple?
• The reason behind Zynga's selloff?
• Pharmacyclics, J&J get FDA shortcut for cancer drug