[GNC] recognition of unrealized gains

[doncram]

Does GnuCash recognize unrealized gains/losses of investments such as
stocks, so that they would appear in an Income Statement for a given period
and in a Balance Sheet for a given date?  And if so, how/where, and can one
control the presentation?

The online documentation of the Tutorial and Concepts Guide, (at
www.gnucash.org) doesn't say.  A lot of effort seems to be devoted to the
good purpose of developing/maintaining the automated updating of prices for
securities, drawing from the internet.   The Investments Chapter covers
purchases and sales and other transactions, and in 9.6.5 has an example
"Assets Over Time" bar chart (found by selecting Reports / Assets &
Liabilities / Asset Chart, apparently) showing the changing value of an
investment in Amazon stock, using varying price quotes, so surely an
updated "most recent" value is available for reporting the value of the
Amazon investment in the Balance Sheet report for any given date, either in
total or by basis vs. unrealized gain/loss amounts.  Also the amount of
unrealized gain/loss achieved for any period could be computed, using the
price database.  Chapter 11 describes manual updating of asset value for a
valuable painting by an explicit entry recognizing unrealized gain, but
this seems not applicable to securities.

Do the B/S and IS reports reflect these?  Sorry for dumb aspect of this
question, because I should be able to figure that out by testing an
example.  I am guessing not because it is not described.  If the reports
automatically do, then the documentation should report that (and I think it
should be highlighted as a really nice feature of GnuCash not done by, say,
Quickbooks AFAIK).  If not, can the amounts be reported, so one could at
least manually record, by journal entry dated December 31, what is
necessary for the B/S and IS to report correctly in total?  If it is
automatically done, it seems to me that one would want to designate where
each stock's unrealized gain/loss should go, e.g. into a general
"Unrealized Gain/Loss - Taxable" or a "-Non-Taxable" account.  Or for a
more specific account like "Unrealized Gain/Loss in Education Fund" (to
relate this to ongoing thread titled "non-currency liabilities").

The not-dumb aspect of this question is to call for a new section in
Chapter 9 and/or Chapter 11 to cover this topic, for an individual and/or
for a business, whether the feature is already developed within GnuCash
4.0, or not.
--Don