So, I pulled my Walmart TU this morning and saw a drop. I know that was caused by my Navy card reporting a balance this month. But what's odd is the Key Factors Affecting your FICO® Score. The #1 reason is: You have no recent installment loan activity.
And then it says:
Your credit report has no recent installment loans (such as auto or student loans). This might be because you have no open installment loans, or because the lender has not recently reported information about this account. Having an installment loan, in combination with other credit accounts, generally demonstrates that your ability to manage a variety of credit types.
Keep this in mind: Although the credit inquiry associated with opening an installment loan may lower your score in the short term, you might consider opening an installment loan. Opening and responsibly managing an installment loan will genreally demonstrate your ability to manage different types of credit.
So, I'm wondering if I should open an installment loan just to meet this criteria. I could get a small loan (either unsecured or secured) with my local bank or CU. I'd really appreciate hearing from some of the FICO experts here. Since this isn't coming from a FAKO site, I am taking it to be valid info.
BTW, the #2 reason was: You have not established a long revolving credit history. My 2 backdated Amexes should be reporting soon, which will help this. And beyond that all I can do is give it time. But the #1 reason, I could rectify.
Thanks! 
So, is it looking for a problem where there isn't one? I could understand if the #2 reason were the #1. That would make sense. What's making me wonder is that for some reason FICO is choosing the #1 problem that there isn't a sufficient mix of credit.
What you said makes sense. That would totally be Murphy's Law! It's relatively easy fix if it would help. Gosh, this FICO stuff is so confusing. Someone ought to write FICO for Dummies. 
@bichonmom wrote:So, is it looking for a problem where there isn't one? I could understand if the #2 reason were the #1. That would make sense. What's making me wonder is that for some reason FICO is choosing the #1 problem that there isn't a sufficient mix of credit.
What you said makes sense. That would totally be Murphy's Law! It's relatively easy fix if it would help. Gosh, this FICO stuff is so confusing. Someone ought to write FICO for Dummies.
I think you have it right there. I would recommend not basing any action purely on those "factors". IME, they are all over the map, and often totally non-factual. My favorite was "The balance on your revolving accounts is too high". But they were all ZERO! You're much better off just following advice on this forum, which I regard as exactly the FICO for Dummies website.
Also, I don't believe the factors come from FICO, but from the CRAs, although I'm not sure of this. Anyway, I've seen statements here that they (CRAs) are required by statute to provide such "advice" to help people achieve better scores. Apparently they are not required to provide useful advice, though, and when they can't find anything to criticise, they just use the random number generator to pull something from the list. This tends to happen when scores are high already, as yours are.
To me, these "factors" seem a perfect perversion of my mother's admonition, "If you can't say something nice about someone, don't say anything at all". Now it's "If you can't think of anything bad to say about someone, just make something up".
Starting Score: EQ 804 - (April 2009) 
When my TU FICO was 799 the only thing FICO said was hurting me was "Too many accounts" I still have the same amount of TL's listed on my TU report, but my TU FICO is now 806, and shows nothing hurting my score, same with EQ
Once you reach 800, FICO will no longer list anything hurting your score.