SAC Capital’s Steven Cohen, whose hedge fund has returned 30% per year for 18 years, sees a pause for the stock market, but solid economic growth in the second half of 2011.

“Cohen … said he expects the stock market to take a ‘pause’ and that while he was optimistic about the second half of the year, forecasting a 4 percent U.S. economic growth rate, he is ‘worried’ about the impact of rising budget deficits in 2012,” Bloomberg reports. (A tip of the cap to the Danbury NewsTimes for picking up the story.)

Cohen seems confident the deficit troubles will be remedied, however. “Either the Democrats and Republicans will get together or the markets will force a solution on them,” he said, adding that he thinks the deficit problem is “easily fixable.”

Cohen also says he’s finding energy to be an “interesting sector”, saying he thinks “energy stocks are discounting oil prices much lower than where we are trading today.”