Futures rose. The focus is on Bernanke's speech at 14:00 GMT.  
The consensus seems to be that Bernanke will not announce another round of quantitative easing, at least based on surveys of economists.  But action the past month suggests that the market has priced in at least some possibility of a direct announcement today.  

Global Stocks:

Nikkei  8,839.91 -143.87 -1.60%
Hang Seng 19,482.57 -70.34 -0.36%
Shanghai Composite 2,047.52 -5.06 -0.25%
Topix 731.64 -12.15 -1.63%
FTSE  5,752.74 +33.29 +0.58%
CAC  3,422.95 +43.84 +1.30%
DAX 6,996.05 +100.56 +1.46%
Crude oil $95.78 +1,23%
Gold $1664.30 +0.43%