how frequently should i monitor an open trade?

I guess it depends on your trading strategy. Scalpers need to check their trades more frequently than swing traders, because they usually view the market using smaller chart timeframes.

Lets say i am scalping on a 1 minute chart, i will be checking my trades say every 5 minutes. Now, if i am the trading using 15 minute charts i will be checking my trades every 45 minutes.

Here's the thing, checking the trade too frequently is not healthy because your blood pressure will go up unnecessarily. Depending on the timeframe you are using to trade, you can set the frequency for checking the trades and this frequency should be higher than the chart time frame.

So, if your chart timeframe is set to 5 minutes, you can check the trade every 15 minutes, if the timeframe is 30 minutes you can check the trade every 1.5 hours, etc.

I avoid checking my trades too frequently because I will be tempted to close them prematurely. If i see the trade in a profit, I will be tempted to close and take the profit while i can so i avoid checking too frequently.

When i open a trade, i monitor it for the first 5 minutes to be sure the price action is doing hat i expected. This means i monitor it for 5 minutes to be sure the trade has gone into profit, after which i monitor less frequently.

What I do is I set a price alert so that when price drops to a certain level the laptop plays a sound note and then I can check the trade to see what's up.

For me, if i open a trade during the London session, I don't check it till the next session which is the New York session etc. I don't check a trade till a new session starts because i observed that a new session can reverse the gains of the older session.

This session per session checking of trades prevents me from over-trading because if i check the trade early and see it is in a loss, I will be tempted to re-enter the market again emotionally.

Just set an alarm notification to notify you when price reaches a certain level of interest instead of looking at the trade every second.

Alarm notifications are kind of hard to set on MetaTrader because it doesn't come as default, so you have to download an Expert Advisor (EA) for the alarm.

Some brokers like Tickmill, Pepperstone & HFM offer free alarm EAs which they call "Alarm Manager" so you can download it and plugin to your MT4/5 for the alarm to work.

For me I use TradingView so the alarm notification comes as inbuilt/default.

This is what the dialogue box for setting an alarm notification looks like on TradingView, you just specify the price and other parameters and create.

There's nothing wrong with checking your trade especially when a new session is about to start or when a new hour is about to start. Some times when a new session starts, it reverses the previous session so you need to check if a reversal has started.

So many times i have been up several pips and a new session came and reversed the gains i made. What matters most is the discipline not to re-enter a trade when you have been stopped out or not to adjust your stop loss to accommodate more losses.

I agree with you, one needs to monitor the trades especially in this period of uncertain news events coming out of the United States & President Trump. One needs to monitor the trades and adjust stop loss to secure profit but not adjust stop loss to make room for more loss. Alternatively, one could also use a trailing stop loss to secure profit as this reduces the need to be checking trades often.

If i am trading on a 5 minute time frame then i check my trade every 5 minutes to see if a reversal candle has formed. I know this can be painstaking but that is why trading on higher timeframes is better.

MT4 does not have trailing stop loss though. I dont even like the idea of checking your trades often because you end up interfering with the trade out of fear. I allow the trade to play out for one hour before checking, if i get stopped out, fine so be it.

I only monitor an open trade when it is nearing a level of support/resistance. outside that I dont bother to monitor i just set my TP