Will a rise in US interest rates cause investments to tumble?

Even the mere prospect of the Federal Reserve raising interest rates has delivered a shock to US markets due to a lack of liquidity - so what can investors expect when the inevitable rate hikes actually come to pass?

Tick-tock. Tick-tock. We still don't know when it's going to happen, but we do know it's only a matter of time. I'm referring, of course, to the inevitable day on which Federal Reserve policymakers begin to raise interest rates for the first time since 2008.

The next key piece of economic data in the puzzle will arrive first thing Friday morning, when the Labor Department tells us just how many new jobs employers created during the month of May. Economists currently predict that figure will come in at around 225,000 - a pretty healthy number, if not enough to push the unemployment rate down below its current level of 5.4%.