Stock Valuation and Rate of Return

[Stas3000]

There's rate of return, discount rate, stock yield. All these terms have a lot in common and are key in investing, but how are they to be determined when valuating a stock of a publicly traded company? There's a myriad of stock valuation methods I've read about -- DCF, CAPM, Gordon model, etc -- and almost all of them naturally involve some required rate of return. So with an annual report of company XYZ,

1) what valuation model is most effective and
2) how does an investor come up with a helpful rate of return and using what variables?

Thanks in advance.