This paper examines the short-selling activities and stock returns during the period from 2007 to 2011. The intraday analysis shows that short sales cluster in some trades, suggesting that short sellers split their trades into smaller orders. The tick-by-tick analysis also demonstrates that short sales do not instantaneously impact short-term stock prices. However, the daily analysis shows a negative association between short sales and future equity returns. Stocks with more short sales tend to have lower subsequent equity returns. More important, the low subsequent equity returns associated with high short sales are permanent and do not reverse in the future. The results from Fama-French and Carhart four-factor model are quantitatively similar. Overall, our empirical results suggest that short sales are helpful in incorporating negative information into the equity prices and resulting in improvement in market efficiency.